


Breathing at the Same Time

by softanticipation



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fix-It, Found Family, M/M, Original Character(s), Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Road Trips, Sharing a Bed, Tony Stark Lives, Tony gives Steve a phone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:54:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29228784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softanticipation/pseuds/softanticipation
Summary: The dust settles and the stones are returned, leaving Steve more aimless than ever. In a world that doesn’t seem to need him anymore, he eventually learns that purpose goes beyond war and love is more than just a four-letter word.Featuring two halves of a road trip, sidewalk chalk, and a man with whom Steve never expected to share a pull-out couch.*Steve sighs, and wants to bang his head against the cabinets. “You’re welcome too, Tony,” he says wearily. “I’m not trying to keep anyone away.”“No,” Tony says bitterly. “You just left without telling anyone where you were going, without any way for us to contact you.”It stings, but it’s not untrue.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 159
Kudos: 237





	1. Chapter 1

After Steve puts the stones back, he’s not sure of where to go. Not sure of what to do.

The compound is ruined, and the Tower hasn’t been theirs in years. There are offers from others: Sam and Bucky are eager to restart their lives, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, without five years of baggage weighing them down; Clint’s family farm has a certain amount of nostalgia attached to it, but that’s a dangerous road to travel down; Pepper tells him that there are funds, and he’ll always have a place in their lives, but it only takes one look at Morgan at her sleeping father’s side to know that her words are more obligatory than anything. 

Not that he doubts that she means it. Pepper has always been lovely and polite, and nothing has happened to change that. 

He could stay in New York. Help with the relief efforts. There are so many people that need to be reintegrated into society: jobs have since been filled, entire buildings condemned, and he could be good at that. Steve has always been good at directing others, at coming up with a plan and pulling it off. The task is daunting, and it would fill something inside of him. It would give him a purpose, after feeling so helpless and defeated. 

It would also bleed him dry. Being in the city day after day, remembering how it used to be, remembering what had gotten him through those five years. It would drain him, and he’d just be scraping out his insides, selling his organs on the black market, letting others live so he could die. It would be a noble cause, but Steve knows. He knows he won’t survive it, not without her. 

Not without the rest of them. 

Instead, Steve heads back to the place he stayed in when he wasn’t keeping Natasha company at the compound. It looks as it did the last time he was there, and he packs a duffel bag and finds the stash of cash behind a loose brick. There’s a cap jammed on his head, he exchanges most of the cash for a bike that’s old but runs well enough, and he gets the hell out of dodge. 

He doesn’t look back. 

*

People are all that keeps Steve going. People, and food.

There’s Rhonda at the diner in south Jersey. Steve is pretty sure she recognizes him, but only keeps his ice water fresh and gives him extra whipped cream on a large slice of cherry pie. When he leaves, he leaves a hefty tip and she meets his eyes from behind the counter where she’s serving an elderly man a plate of buckwheat pancakes. Her smile is small and she mouths a _thank you,_ wrinkles beginning to set in her kind face. He doesn’t think he deserves it, but he pulls on his leather jacket and heads outsides into the thick, oppressive Atlantic humidity. 

Steve heads south until he smells salt in the air and finds a small but clean motel on the beach when he knows he’s nearing the end of his endurance. Along with his room key, he’s handed a coupon for a half-priced appetizer at the local seafood shack. He discovers he enjoys the soft-shelled crab and the crisp beer that the waitress recommends, and she doesn’t seem to recognize him, but she does bat heavily-mascaraed lashes at him. It’s simple and meaningless, and Steve smiles because having someone smile back makes him feel okay for a fraction of a second. 

From there he heads west, because any further south would be too far south. He stops on the side of the road to help two middle-aged women without a carjack change a flat tire. They thank him profusely, offer him snacks from the cooler they’ve packed for their trip into the mountains, and he accepts an apple while their baby babbles and blows spit bubbles from the safety of one of his mothers’ arms. What he does refuse is an offer of payment, despite their insistence that he’d saved them time and money. Steve doesn’t know how much a tow truck charges, but he climbs back on his bike after watching them merge back onto the highway. 

For a while, Steve loses track of time. He barely remembers to glance at the road signs, but when he realizes he’s in Arkansas, he pauses. 

He doesn’t know anything about Arkansas. He’s never been here before. He pulls off a brightly lit highway to find fields and wind along rivers and ends up staring at the stars while being bitten by mosquitoes. 

He’s still not sure of where to go. He’s still not sure of what to do. 

*

There’s talk of things getting bad in Houston. Steve hears it when he wanders into a SuperWalmart because he’s running out of toothpaste, because for all the things he can live without, toothpaste is not one of them. His facial hair has grown out enough to look mildly scruffy and he knows it’s a sign, recognizes the signs that he’s not doing great, but he’s got his clothes in the washer back at the olive green painted motel and that’s good, at least. 

At least he isn’t dirty. 

He takes a detour through the food aisles, perusing the brightly-colored shelves until he comes to something that makes him slam to a stop. 

It’s just a box of cereal, some kid-friendly brand full of sugar and packed with vitamins and minerals to make up for it. Instead of grabbing it, the way his instincts tell him to, he picks up a box two down from it and pretends to be reading the nutritional facts of something with too much chocolate to ever count as breakfast when he hears it. 

“My sister-in-law says it’s been an absolute nightmare,” comes the drawl, too loud for a mostly-empty aisle. When there isn’t an audible reply, he deduces that she’s talking on the phone. “Yeah. That poor city. First the hurricane and the floods. Then the blip - they lost more than anywhere, I heard. Not that anybody can figure this shit out. It’ll be fifty years from now, and they still won’t tell us how bad it was.”

Cold sweat prickles along Steve’s hairline, and the text in front of him begins to blur. 

“I know. Let me tell you - bullshit. Half the city of Houston is suddenly back, and nobody wants to get a fucking job. They want welfare. Some kind of retribution for what happened to them. As if it’s our fault they disappeared! They’re not getting a single dime of the taxes I’ve paid while they were gone. Well, they can kiss the government’s ass all they want, but no one is coming to save them. They’ll have to get back up on their feet all by themselves, stop looting all those stores.”

Steve’s hands clench tight around fragile cardboard, and he wants to move but he’s rooted to the spot.

“Now you listen to me, Rosemary. I’m not saying it’s their fault, but it damn sure isn’t ours. I’m not going to be held responsible while we’ve got people like Pepper Potts - now hold on a damn second. There’s a gentleman here - sir? Rosemary, hold on, this gentleman looks an awful lot like - ”

He shoves the mangled box back on the shelf and leaves the aisle as fast as he can. 

He doesn’t forget about the first box of cereal, a large Iron Man printed across the bowl of Iron-O’s. The large writing announced that for every box sold, Stark Industries would make a donation to relief efforts nationwide. 

Steve does regret not buying a box, so on his way to Houston, he stops in another Walmart and buys two and a newspaper that talks about a charity that needs funding to further their efforts to reunite kids with their families. He eats dry cereal as he travels through Texas, and the burn in the back of his throat matches the one in the back of his eyes. 

*

Texas is hot. 

Steve finds the convention center downtown and parks his bike, staring. There’s nothing to indicate what the building is being used for, but he glances at the newspaper in hand to confirm he’s in the place in the accompanying photo. He holds it up, comparing, and just as he’s decided to approach, a young woman pokes her head out of a pair of doors. 

“If you are who I think you are,” she asks, gaze hardened and pointed, “what the hell are you doing here?”

Denise has a head full of plaits that show off how young she is. She would’ve still been a kid when it all happened, and he tries not to think about it. About how she probably lost her parents, about how he’s pretty sure the whispering kids behind her are her younger siblings, and how it makes him sick to his stomach. 

He adjusts his cap, shoves the paper in the duffel he hadn’t wanted to leave on his bike, and thinks about the dwindling bills in his wallet. 

“I can help,” is all he can think to say. 

Her eyes narrow. “How?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “But I know I can.”

So he gets shown to what used to be the ticket office, lined with computers and phones and filing cabinets and stacks of paper. Denise snaps her fingers at what look like twins with a deck of cards between them, one of them wearing glasses that get pushed up a nose. 

“Stop fooling around,” she tells them, striding towards a ringing landline. “Show the good captain here how to help.”

And that’s all the introduction he gets. 

Elliot and Elizabeth are fifteen-year-old twins, he learns. 

“But you can call me Beth,” she tells him, snapping her hot pink bubblegum. She’s louder, bouncing off the walls as he follows. Elliot with the glasses is quieter, rolling his eyes at his sister and sneaking glances at Steve when he thinks he can get away with it. 

“What do you guys do here?” he asks, because it’s more polite than, _how did you end up here?_

“We help Denise and Josie with whatever they need,” Beth says, after a particularly large bubble. “We go around asking for people to donate supplies, we sit with the younger kids. Elliot is really good with the babies.”

“There aren’t so many babies anymore,” Elliot says, soft-spoken as he trails after his sister. “They’ve all grown up.”

“You’ve got to meet Callie,” Beth says, pushing through carpeted hallways and waving to those she passes. “It’s lunch now - we can take you to the main eating area. We eat in shifts, to make it easier for Hank and Rachel. They take care of the food for us. Today’s turkey sandwiches. Do you like Cheetos?”

Steve meets so many people his head swims. It’s almost entirely kids and young adults, a few older individuals who lost their kids and only just got them back but want to keep at the work. It’s a Saturday, and Callie groans with Beth about homework while Elliot reads a well-worn paperback that’s definitely not for school. When a young woman who introduces herself as Josie slots into the seat across from him, with a wild head of tightly coiled hair and big gold hoops in her ears, Steve shifts and wonders if he’s made a mistake. 

“Denise thinks she can do this on her own,” Josie says with a raised eyebrow as she steals a couple of Beth’s Cheetos, ignoring the whiny protest for her trouble. “We had a good thing going. A schedule, a rhythm worked out. Then you guys did whatever you did.”

She swirls her fingers around, and Steve clears his throat and puts his sandwich down with trembling fingers. 

“We never meant to - ”

“So now we’ve got to get these kids back with their parents,” she says, ignoring him. “Some of these kids, we know they don’t have any. There were a lot of deaths in the aftermath. So then we’ve got the ones who blipped back, and don’t have anywhere to go.”

Steve knows. Accidents, lack of resources. He swallows around the lump in his throat as she keeps going. 

“We need help finding people,” she says. “And we always need money. Denise thinks we can move somewhere smaller by the end of the year, and the damn mayor won’t let us stay. They think getting conventions and performances up and running will help, somehow.”

She rolls her eyes, and Steve is aware of the fact that Elliot hasn’t turned the page since Josie sat down. 

“I can help,” he says, because it’s all he can do. 

She looks at him closely, and it’s unnerving. 

“We’ll put you on phones,” she says decisively. “You don’t look like you scare easy.”

He thinks that she might be wrong. 

*

Wednesday nights are for indoor games. Steve has always been awful at Monopoly and he takes turns beating and then being beat by Elliot at Scrabble. He plays Go Fish with the elementary aged kids and spins when they play Twister, and learns that there’s a secret poker ring amongst the oldest kids. They play for things like extra packets of cookies and cigarettes, and Steve finds comfort in knowing that kids will always be kids. 

Sundays are for lasagna dinners and evenings outside. They pass out Fudgesicles and Steve draws on the concrete with sidewalk chalk until his hands are stained with sky blue and sunflower yellow. He draws pictures of fantastical flowers and decorated hopscotch squares, and then they start asking for more detailed drawings. He graduates to fire-breathing dragons and even sketches out portraits of the kids who are brave enough to ask. 

“Can you do Iron Man?” a middle school aged boy asks. He’s got freckles and ginger hair and the tops of his cheeks are starting to burn as he extends a strawberry colored piece of chalk. “I miss seeing him fly on the tv.”

Steve wonders how old this boy was the last time Tony had been an active Avenger. 

“Only if you go get some sunscreen from Diana,” he tells the boy, ruffling his hair and taking the chalk. 

From there it just grows, and he grows used to it. The back of his neck and his arms gradually turn tan under the beating sun as fall stretches on, October just as brutal as September had been. The kids gather in small crowds as he crouches down, sweeping curves and sketching out sharp lines. He thought they’d find it traumatic, but kids are resilient and call out what they want to see next. 

At first, Denise tries to tell him that he doesn’t have to. He thinks she sees the look on his face when he shades in the shield, and the next morning she brings him a luxurious bottle of Coke as he crosses names off a printed list. 

He’s been working his way through the information that Bonnie compiles, scouring the Internet for anyone in the area who could be looking for one of their kids. It’s not particularly difficult work, but it wears on him as he reaches out and is disappointed more often than not.

“I know you only drink that crappy coffee because everyone expects you to be as dependent on caffeine as the rest of us,” Denise says, and she’s right that he loads it up with cream and sugar because the taste has never done much for him either. “You don’t have to entertain them, you know. You’ve been through as much as they have.”

Precious few of them talk about why they’re there. He’s figured out that Beth and Elliot lost their parents to a murder-suicide after their two other siblings were dusted, and Jackson’s grandma passed a couple years back. His mom came back with everyone else, but she’d always been an addict and Josie makes sure he knows he’ll always have a home with them. 

Steve doesn’t know how to grieve. 

He only knows how to hold the kids who wake up from nightmares, hold them and tell them they’re safe and it’s okay to sleep. He only knows how to coordinate fundraisers and fill out applications for grants and scholarships. He only knows how to draw heroic battle scenes, a reimagined version of the events at the compound where he fights alongside Sam and Natasha and someone who isn’t Tony wears the gauntlet and his shield isn’t pulverized by the end of it. 

Steve just gives Denise his best smile, the one that calms all the kids and charms all the donors and never seemed to work on the people who had mattered the most. 

“I’m okay,” he says with a shrug, like it’s no big deal. “They’re just pictures.”

She fixes him with a look, and he thinks she’s buying it, but he’s not sure. 

She pushes off against the counter and goes to leave. “Sure. You find the Ramirez’s dad?”

“Not yet,” he says, shaking his head and thinking of the two girls, with their long, straight black hair. They’re a few years apart and attached at the hip, and Serena can’t remember much of anything before Denise and the center, and her older sister isn’t much better. “Alexa thinks they’ve got a cousin who’d be willing, but she’s fuzzy on the details.”

It’s been more than five years and the girls aren’t very old. He wouldn’t expect them to remember anything. 

Denise leaves with a sad smile, and Steve cracks open his Coke and goes back to work, tuning out Beth’s chattering a few seats down. She’s good on the phones - gets people to stay on the line long enough to talk about the hard stuff. 

Steve doesn’t want to talk about the hard stuff. 

Steve doesn’t want to talk about how he has nightmares of his own. 

Steve doesn’t want to talk about how he wishes he had someone to hold him, to tell him he’s safe and it’s okay to sleep. 

*

Josie forces him to buy things for himself, saying his clothes are wearing at the seams and making him look like a hobo. She sends Elliot with him, and Zeke and Manny want to tag along with their pocket change, and they stop in the mall food court before they head back. Steve buys them each a giant cinnamon roll and it’s the closest he’s felt to normal since before Siberia. 

He could cry, but instead he laughs and listens to the teenage boys talk about Manny’s newest girlfriend and Zeke’s upcoming birthday. When they’re approached by another couple of teenagers - pretty, confident, looking like everything is dandy and their lives have gone untouched - he adopts a defensive posture immediately. 

“Can we get a picture?” one of them asks, her round hazel eyes earnest, and Steve forces himself to relax. “We just - we never thought we’d run into Captain America here.”

Steve glances around at the boys. Elliot is pushing his glasses up his nose, but otherwise they all seem unbothered. 

“Yeah,” he relents, because they seem harmless and he’s never been very good at saying no. 

Manny offers to take the picture and winks at the girls who giggle in response. They thank Steve profusely before departing, and he doesn’t know why he was so worried in the first place. 

He remembers why when he’s working the phones the next day. 

They’ve sent several dozen of the kids back to their families, but it’s clear that some of them don’t have anyone to go back to. There are webs of relatives and the occasional kid doesn’t even want to go, clinging to Josie and Denise and yelling. This is what they’ve come to know, and Steve listens as Beth sniffles at her station. Callie left a week ago to join her step-brother and his family in Dallas, and she’s promised to come back and visit, but it’s not the same and Steve knows that Beth knows it. 

He’s been handling the bulk of the incoming calls for the day, but when the line rings as he’s wrapping up a call to schedule when Harry can be picked up by his uncle and his partner, Beth clears her throat. 

“I’ve got it,” she mumbles, and he can see her wipe her face as she reaches for the phone. “Hello?”

He doesn’t listen as he marks the date in the desk calendar in glittery pink pen according to Denise’s color-coded key. It’s not till he hangs up and finishes underlining the event that he realizes Beth is staring at him. He glances up to meet her uncertain expression. 

“You okay?” he asks, and then notices that she’s still holding the phone in her hand. 

“Someone’s calling for you,” she says slowly, extending the phone. “Says his name is James.”

Steve’s surprised he doesn’t go into cardiac arrest as he stares at the phone. 

*

The damn photo with the girls. They’d posted it online and it had gone viral, and it had caught the attention of one of Clint’s kids, and from there the game of telephone had made its way around until it made its way back to Steve. 

“The compound’s been rebuilt,” Sam says, once Bucky has passed off the phone. He hadn’t said much beyond a greeting, telling Steve that it was good to hear his voice and he hoped he was doing well. “It’s not the same, but it’s something. We’ve got Wanda, and Rhodes spends a lot of time here. Scott came by a couple of weeks ago to consult on something, brought Hope. That was one hell of a time. You could drop in.”

“Maybe later,” Steve says, but it feels like a lie. He’s been in Houston for a couple of months and November has finally freed the city from the oppressive heat he’s grown used to, and he’s in no hurry to leave before he’s made sure that every kid who could have a home, makes it there. 

“You’ve got a room,” Sam goads. 

And that’s a surprise. 

“I've got a room?”

“Yeah,” Sam says with a chuckle. “I think the kid has made him go soft, though. Either that, or the separation.”

Steve’s brows furrow. “Separation?”

“Tony and Pepper,” Sam says, and Steve can hear the frown in his voice. “You didn’t hear?”

“How would I?” Steve points out. He hasn’t been carrying a phone, and if the kids don’t mention it, he keeps his nose out of the news. 

There’s a wrestle on the end of the line, and Steve exhales. 

“You don’t have to come back,” Bucky says, and Steve’s chest loosens and tightens at the same time. “But things are okay here. He’s okay with everything. In case you were worried about that.”

When Steve lies down that night, his head is full of thoughts about how much he’s missed. 

He can’t decide whether he wants to run back towards it all and not miss another single thing, or pack up and head for the west coast. 

In the end, he stays right where he is.

*

Josie throws the calculator across the room. 

“We still have thirty-five kids,” she says angrily. Steve doesn’t miss the way Denise puts a hand on her knee, and he’s fairly sure it’s never happened before. 

“That’s doable,” Denise says stubbornly. “Think of how many more there used to be.”

Josie gets up to retrieve the calculator and leaves the room. Denise follows. 

“I wish I could do more,” Steve says, looking at his hands. 

Hank makes a sympathetic noise. 

“You have helped,” Rachel says, but he doesn’t believe it. “We’ve sent home so many kids.”

“There’s so much to do,” Steve says, and he understands Josie’s anger. “A million cities, just like this one.”

“It’s just Christmas,” Hank says. “These kids have had a lot less these past few years. Anything we can give them will make a difference.”

Steve thinks of the Ramirez girls, and Jackson, and how close he’s gotten to those who are still there. He still draws on the concrete, butterflies for Christina and racecars for Lance, and Ben still asks for Iron Man. He draws, wears down the strawberry and sunflower sticks of chalk until they’re nearly gone and all that’s left is the sky blue for the eye slits and the reactor. 

If he closes his eyes and tries, Steve can hear the repulsors firing. 

It makes him ache inside, so deep inside that he isn’t sure he can feel anything at all. 

A few days later, there’s a donation. It’s obscenely large, credited to a Howard Potts, and Steve itches with questions. He wants to know why, and how, but there isn’t a number to dial and he just curls up with Serena in his lap and holds on a little too tight as she lets herself be rocked back to sleep. 

Steve thinks that for as much as he’d left New York with self-preservation in mind, he doesn’t have very much left. 

And yet, on Christmas morning, he watches the kids open small piles of presents for the first time in years, and he feels like maybe he’s less empty than he used to be. 

*

After New Years, there’s a house for Denise and Josie. There’s a house for Denise’s brother and sister, for the twins and Jackson and everyone who’s left. There are eighteen of them, including Steve, and he can’t believe it. He borrows the phone that Beth got for Christmas, the one that she can buy minutes for with the allowance Josie is planning on giving her, and listens to the ringing as his fingers rub over the piece of paper he’d written Sam’s number on.

“Can you thank him for me?” Steve asks, barely able to get the words out. 

“Can’t you thank him yourself?” Sam asks. “The guy doesn’t bite, Steve. He just hangs out with the Spider-Boy and brings his daughter by because Wanda can hover her off the ground. Dude nearly shits himself every time it happens, it’s hilarious, but he’s harmless.”

“I don’t know what to say to him,” Steve admits. They’d come so close to patching things up, so close to reaching what they’d never really had before, and then - 

Well, then Tony recovered with his people at his side, and Steve wasn’t one of those people. He’s long since come to terms with that. 

For some reason though, he takes down the number Sam reads off and calls before he loses his nerve. 

*

“It’s Steve,” he says, and it immediately feels unnecessary. 

“Have you finally stopped being a luddite, then?”

Steve slips the piece of paper in his pocket, careful not to smudge the pencil. 

“Thank you,” he says, and it comes out rougher than he wants it to. “I don’t know how, but thank you.”

Tony is quiet, and Steve thinks he’s made a mistake. 

“That’s all I wanted to say,” he says, lamely. “Just...thank you.”

“Do you need money?” Tony speaks up, and he sounds different. Like he’s forcing the brightness into the words. “I can send more. Whatever the kids need.”

“We do okay,” Steve says, shaking his head. “It’s not about the money.”

“There’s got to be something,” Tony insists. “Do they need a bigger place? I can find an abandoned McMansion down there, they can each have their own bedroom and en-suite. Tennis courts, a pool, the whole shebang. How many are there?”

Steve can’t speak, and the screen door creaks open. He turns to see Beth, who looks as nosy as a teenager possibly can. 

“Callie is supposed to call at seven,” she says. 

When he pulls the phone away from his ear to check the time, it reads 6:54.

“I’ll be inside in a second,” he promises, and Beth nods. She lingers, but he raises his eyebrows at her, and she looks guilty before disappearing. 

“Sorry,” Steve says into the receiver. He’s a little surprised Tony is still there. “I’m borrowing one of the kids' phones.”

“You need me to send you one?”

“No,” Steve says, and he shakes his head even though Tony can’t see. “Look, I really appreciate what you’ve done. It means a lot to all of us here. But I don’t need you to do...whatever this is.”

Tony is quiet, again. 

“Okay,” he says, and all the brightness is gone. He sounds deflated, almost careless. “I just thought - if there was something I could do. We’ve been trying to coordinate all over the country. Have SI do what it can. And you - ”

But he doesn’t finish that thought, and Steve doesn’t ask him to. 

“I wanted to thank you,” Steve repeats. “So thank you, Tony.”

“You’re welcome, Cap.”

Tony hangs up, and Steve stares at the screen. 

“It’s not Cap anymore,” he says into the empty backyard. 

*

When Hank leaves to be with a girl he met in the city, Steve is the oldest one in the house. 

He doesn’t think he’s aging much, if at all. He needs the least amount of sleep in the house, so he stays on the pull-out couch downstairs. The house isn’t huge but it has five bedrooms and works exactly the way they need it to and he wonders how Tony knew. It takes a while to settle in but it feels like a home the entire time, and Steve smiles as he helps Elliot with precalculus and holds Serena while she watches cartoons. 

Beth and Bonnie take it upon themselves to decorate the room for the older girls, stringing up fairy lights they find in a clearance bin. Steve finds scrap wood and lets Manny and Zeke help him build a large table and chairs for them to sit around in anticipation of warmer weather, and then they build a fire pit. Hannah turns twelve, and Steve supervises as Alexa helps Crystal, Denise’s younger sister, bake a box mix of cupcakes. They end up with chocolate frosting smeared all over the counters but clean it up without needing to be asked, and Steve lights candles and they all sing as a group. Josie gets accepted to law school on a full scholarship in the fall, having spent the last five years finishing her Bachelor’s degree online, and they celebrate with beers after all the kids are tucked in. 

There are just three adults left, and Steve knows how hard Denise and Josie have worked to keep these kids with them, and they sit outside and it’s the closest thing Steve has ever had to a family in the traditional sense. 

“You ever think about how long you’ll stay?” Josie asks, out of the blue. 

Steve watches the way Denise puts a warning hand on her shoulder. “No.”

“You’ve got people, don’t you?” Josie pushes, tilting her head to the side. Her tight curls are pulled back tonight, out of the way of the flickering flames keeping them warm as the cool weather persists. “You’ve been with us a while now.”

“You trying to get him to leave?” Denise asks with a snort. “After all the good he’s done us?”

Steve swallows around thoughts of the sidewalk chalk art he still does for Lance and Ben, and how he fixes Christina microwave mac and cheese on nights she’s feeling particularly picky. He thinks of Jackson and Charlie, Denise’s little brother, and how they point out every dog they see when Steve walks them to the school bus stop in the mornings. 

He thinks about what he’s done and how he isn’t sure there’s much left for him to do.

He’s not sure of where else he’d want to go. He’s not sure of what else he’d want to do.

*

When Beth comes flouncing in after school one day, her tongue is blue with her cotton candy gum and she’s rolling her eyes as the other high schoolers file in after her. 

“Someone’s been looking for you,” she informs Steve, dangling her little phone in front of him. “Call them back so they stop calling me. My phone went off in Chemistry today and my teacher almost confiscated it.”

Steve apologizes profusely and opens up the call log, excusing himself to the backyard. When he redials, he’s not surprised to hear Bucky. 

“Let me pass the phone to Sam.”

When Sam says hello, Steve grins. 

“You two sharing a phone?”

“It’s easier on missions,” Sam explains, unperturbed. “Just checking in. You need your own damn phone, man.”

“We’ve got a landline,” Steve tells him, and recites the number, and Sam recites it to Bucky, who will memorize it. 

“You like being a dad?”

Steve pauses. “I’m not a dad.”

Sam snorts. “Yeah. You’re as much of a dad as Stark, at this point. You coming back anytime soon?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “You could come visit.”

He almost regrets the words as soon as they’re out there, but Sam hums like he’s considering it. 

“That an open invite? We might be tied up for a while. Thinking about calling Wanda out for backup.”

“Give Buck the phone so I can give him the address.”

When Steve gives Beth back her phone with the promise that she won’t be bothered anymore, he feels strange. 

He feels lighter. 

*

Steve sells the bike for scraps once they’ve got enough together to buy an old SUV. Denise teaches the older kids how to parallel park and do three-point turns on the weekends in empty parking lots, and Josie shoves Steve out the door one Monday night. 

“They’re your friends,” she insists, much pushier than Denise ever is. “We’ll survive without you for an hour.”

Bucky and Sam and Wanda look good, if tired. They eat in a diner, and Bucky demolishes several burgers while Sam complains about his table manners. 

“My mama would never let me get away with that,” Sam grumps, and the way Wanda glances at Steve tells him that this argument is ongoing. 

“How are you?” Wanda asks, licking whipped cream off the maraschino cherry on top of her peanut butter milkshake. 

“Good,” Steve says with a shrug. “How was your mission?”

“Easy,” Wanda says, and Sam looks at her incredulously. 

“Oh yeah, you can say that because you missed the hard part,” he scoffs, elbowing Bucky away from his fries. 

Steve slides Bucky his basket of fries. It’s his second, and he knows what that super soldier metabolism is like, even if Sam doesn’t. 

“You barely needed me,” Wanda dismisses. “And I missed Morgan’s weekend with Stark. You owe me for that.”

“He needs to learn to handle the kid on his own, anyway,” Sam says. “With Pepper moving back to California - ”

“What?” Steve asks, frowning. “Pepper’s moving?”

“Pepper moved,” Bucky corrects. 

“After Christmas, I think,” Wanda says, face screwing up as she tries to remember. 

“Stark’s been moping around the complex whenever he isn’t flying Morgan back and forth,” Sam says. 

“He’s not moping,” Bucky says, and he glances at Steve. “He just lives there, like the rest of us.”

“The divorce is almost finalized,” Sam says, a horrible gossip, just as Steve remembers. “We’re just lucky there wasn’t a custody battle.”

“Stark seems to think they will stay friends,” Wanda says, but there’s something in the way her upper lips curls as she does that gives Steve pause. 

Steve walks with them back to the open field where they’ve parked the Quinjet and apologizes for not having the room for them to stay. 

“It’s alright,” Bucky says with a shrug, and he hugs Steve goodbye. “Was good to see you. Don’t be a stranger.”

Wanda looks at him intently. 

“I’m not doing anything,” she says, but it’s unnecessary. He’s trusted her for a long time. 

“Take care of yourself,” he tells her, and she hugs him tightly. Steve returns the hug, just as tight, and almost lets himself think about how much he’ll miss them. 

Sam is the one who hangs back. 

“You gonna make it back in one piece?” Steve asks with raised brows. 

“He’ll get us there safe,” Sam says, jerking his chin to where Bucky is already fiddling with the controls. “We want to sleep in our own beds tonight. Everyone misses you, you know.”

Steve shoves his hands in his pockets and searches for the words. 

“I don’t know what I’d do there,” he admits. “At least here, I’ve got a purpose. We got more than three hundred kids back to their families. And the ones we’ve still got...I’m not their dad, and they know that, but I’m what they’ve got. And they don’t have much.”

“Well,” Sam says, clapping him on the shoulder. “You’ll always have a room with us.”

It’s hard to hug Sam - Sam, who got him through one of the loneliest times of his life - but he does, and he tries not to hold on. 

When he goes back to the house, he sits at the counter and eats the bowl of rainbow-colored ice cream that Beth scoops out for him. 

“Manny found a ten-dollar bill on the street,” she says, matter-of-fact as she licks the back of her spoon. 

“You know, we’re supposed to be the ones taking care of you.”

“You do,” Beth says, and her ice cream is chocolate and studded with marshmallows and streaks of fudge. “Besides. The corner store was having a two-for-one special.”

Steve thinks of the slip of paper in his toiletry bag that he can visualize clear as day, and stares at the phone hung on the wall. He can hear Denise upstairs, firmly telling Jackson that it’s time for bed, and Bonnie and Crystal are fighting over who gets the next turn in the girls’ bathroom. It’s a pleasant sort of cacophony, familiar and comforting. 

Beth comes to sit next to him and knocks their shoulders together. 

“Hey,” she says, and she’s smiling, and Steve smiles back. “How are your friends?”

Sometimes he can’t believe she’s not even sixteen yet. 

“Good,” he reassures her. 

“You seem kinda bummed,” she says, licking her spoon again. “Sometimes I get bummed after I talk to Callie, you know. But Denise says that’s normal, to miss your friends right after you talk to them. Reminds you of what you’re missing.”

Steve just eats his ice cream. It’s fruity, he thinks, and nothing he would ever pick out himself, but it’s good. 

“Do you miss being with all your superhero friends?”

They don’t talk about it a lot in the house. The kids all know him as Steve, not as Captain America and he appreciates it. They know who he is, it’s not a secret, even if some of the younger ones don’t quite understand what it means. But Beth asking reminds him that he isn’t just Steve, and he rests his spoon in his bowl and thinks about the piece of paper in his toiletry bag. 

“Sometimes,” he admits. “But it’s not the same. You know?”

Beth just nods, then hesitates. 

“What?” he asks, because this is Beth, who asks Steve to buy her tampons without blinking and wants to take a bus to visit Callie over spring break. 

“Do you ever want to talk about them?” she asks. 

He doesn’t know how to answer, and Beth swaps their bowls out. The chocolate is overly sweet and cloying, but it figures the kids would love it. 

“It’s okay if you do,” she says, all casual-like. “I won’t tell anyone.”

Steve chuckles. “You think I’m worried about you giving my secrets away?”

Beth gives him a very serious look.

“All your friends are back to being superheroes again,” she says, as stern as Denise. “And you’re here.”

“I want to be here,” he tells her. 

“But don’t you ever want to be there too?”

He thinks about that as he tries to sleep that night, tossing and turning on the pull-out couch. 

Yeah, he realizes. He does. 

*

Christina sits on the counter with tears in her eyes, and Steve tries to find the right angle at which he can look at her knee without blocking the overhead light. 

“It hurts,” she says, on the verge of crying again, and Serena holds her other hand diligently. 

“She tripped and fell,” Serena says, even though she’s already repeated the story several times. “Right on the street.”

“I know,” Steve says as soothingly as he can as he finishes picking the tiny pieces of asphalt out of her skin. The tweezers feel too small in his hands, but he manages to steadily maneuver them until all that’s left is a raw, red, bloody mess. “Thank you for helping her, Serena.”

Serena grins and straightens up, shoulders square and proud. 

“It hurts,” Christina says, fat crocodile tears rolling down her puffy cheeks. “I just wanted to say hi to the puppy.”

“He was across the street,” Serena explains, again. 

“I know,” Steve says. “You’re being really brave, Christina. What do you say the three of us take a walk to Burger King after this?”

Serena gasps. The girl has blossomed into quite the personality over the months since he first met her, and he strongly suspects Beth and Bonnie’s influence. “Like a secret?”

“Like a secret,” he says distractedly, unwrapping a few alcohol wipes. He’s reminded of the times he had to patch up his fellow teammates over the years, and it was never anything this small, but it’s good to know that bribery works universally. “What do you say to some fries, Christina?”

Christina rubs the back of her hand across her wet face. “Can I get ketchup?”

“Lots of ketchup,” Steve says. 

Serena magnanimously allows her hands to be squeezed within an inch of her life as Steve cleans the shallow wound, and Christina howls in childlike pain. He winces but keeps going, dabbing on Neosporin with a cotton swab and reminding himself to thank Denise for keeping the first aid kit stocked. Just as he’s handing Christina the box of Disney Princess Band-aids, letting her pick who she wants plastered over her knee, the phone rings. 

He grabs it as the two girls debate Ariel and Mulan, and thinks that it’s probably Josie, who’s out with the younger boys. She’d whisked them away after school to do some shopping, since they’re all out of laundry detergent and Ben and Jackson had needed to release some pent-up energy in the aisles of their local Target. 

“Hey,” Steve says, sandwiching the phone between his ear and shoulder as he holds out a hand for Christina’s final choice. “Do you want me to sneak you anything from Burger King?”

“I could really go for a combo right about now, actually. How’d you know?”

The voice on the other end is familiar and distinctly masculine, and Steve curses. 

The girls’ eyes go big. 

“That’s a bad word,” Serena says in awe as Christina hands him a Jasmine band-aid. 

Steve pulls a face. “Girls, don’t repeat that, okay? I’m sorry. Christina, keep still, otherwise it won’t stick right.”

“I’m telling Denise on him,” Serena tells Christina, who shakes her head rapidly. 

“Sorry,” Steve says again, and there’s a clearing of a throat on the phone. 

“Cap?”

“Steve,” he corrects automatically. 

“That’s your name,” Serena says, poking Steve’s side as he gets the adhesive smoothed down, the booboo all taken care of. He shifts the phone, covers the receiver, and gives the two of them his best strict parental figure face. 

“I know my name,” he says, and he lifts Christina off the counter with one hand, setting her down on the ground easily. “You two go change out of your school clothes because Josie won’t be happy if you get ketchup all over those shirts, okay? Then come back down and we can go.”

The girls scramble towards the stairs, laughter trailing behind them, and Steve listens for a moment. 

Then there’s a noise from the phone in his hand and he remembers who’s on the other end, and curses. 

Again.

“Sorry,” he says for the third time. “Christina scraped her knee, and well, I guess you know what a six-year-old with a skinned knee is like.”

“That I do,” Tony says lightly. “You’ve really settled in there, haven’t you?”

Steve rests a hip against the counter and runs a hand through his hair. He’s in dire need of a proper cut and shave, but Alexa likes rubbing her face against his beard, says it feels funny. Besides, after what happened at the mall all those months ago, he likes being able to go places incognito. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Can I do something for you?”

“Can’t a guy just call to chat?”

They haven’t just chatted in years. Steve tugs on his hair, and begins cleaning up the wrappers strewn across the counter. 

“Hey, Tony,” he says, wary. 

“Heard some of your pals paid you a visit,” Tony says, managing to sound nonchalant and bothered at the same time. 

“Sam was getting annoying,” Steve says, tucking the Neosporin back in its slot in the kit. “Figured it was the only way to shut him up.”

“Might make a guy feel a little left out,” Tony remarks, and Steve’s hand stills. 

“You bought this house,” Steve says, uncomfortable. “It’s yours, so if you - ”

“The house isn’t in my name,” Tony states, and it’s true. The house legally belongs to Denise and Josie. “It’s not mine.”

Steve sighs, and wants to bang his head against the cabinets. 

“You’re welcome too, Tony,” he says wearily. “I’m not trying to keep anyone away.”

“No,” Tony says bitterly. “You just left without telling anyone where you were going, without any way for us to contact you.”

It stings, but it’s not untrue. 

“It’s not easy for me,” Steve says, and he can’t decide whether he’s angry or hurt by the barbed words. “Not like it is for you.”

Tony makes a derisive noise. 

“You think any of this has been easy for me? You’re still full of shit, I see.”

Steve’s mouth forms a tight line. He can hear the girls on the stairs again. 

“I’ve got to go,” he says, forcing his voice to stay even. “I promised the girls Burger King.”

“Yeah, you go,” Tony says, voice dripping with disdain. “It’s the only thing you’ve ever been any good at, after all. Hey, let me ask before you go.”

Steve’s grip on the phone tightens. 

“You going to give those kids a heads up before you leave them?” Tony asks, and it cuts so deep that Steve thinks it severs his spinal cord, leaving him numb. He hangs up the phone without responding, without trusting himself to speak without yelling, and he doesn’t want the girls to hear all the things he wants to say. 

“Steve?” Serena asks. “Are we still going to Burger King?” 

Steve turns around and forces himself to smile. 

“Yeah,” he says, and they’re both smiling back at him. “We’re still going to Burger King. Who wants a Sprite?”

*

When they get back to the house, Josie looks at him funny all night. She doesn’t say anything until late, until the kids have gone up for the night and she’s unwrapping a pack of Hostess cupcakes from her secret stash. 

“Tony called,” she says, expression unreadable. “Said to tell you he’s sorry.”

Steve doesn’t sleep much that night, and wants to cry when he realizes he can’t remember the last time Serena woke up in the middle of the night and needed him to hold her. Instead, he holds a pillow to his chest and forces himself to breathe.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The kids and their approximate ages, because I know it can't be easy to keep them all straight, and I referenced this endlessly: Manny (17), Zeke (16), Bonnie (16), Beth (15), Elliot (15), Crystal (13), Hannah (12), Lance (11), Ben (11), Alexa (10), Charlie (8), Jackson (7), Serena (7), Christina (6).

He’s throwing a football around with Zeke and Manny in the backyard when Beth slips out, phone pressed to her ear and watermelon gum snapping. 

“No, I swear,” Beth says into the phone, too fast for normal ears, but Steve listens as he watches Zeke fumble the ball. “It’s really him, Callie. Bonnie is pouring him lemonade, like he’s gonna fucking - ”

“Beth,” Steve says, signaling to the boys for a timeout. 

“ - just because he’s divorced doesn’t mean she isn’t still in high school. Hi, Steve.”

“Watch your language,” he tells her, and she rolls her eyes. 

“Sorry,” she says, normal this time, for normal human ears. Steve wipes his palms on his jeans. “Your friend is here.”

“My friend?” Steve asks, thrown. 

“You might wanna get him out of here before Ben loses his shit,” she informs him. “A chance to meet his favorite superhero? He’s gonna puke. No offense, Steve. Ben picked a favorite long before you came around.”

“Wait,” Manny says, looking between Steve and the house. “Iron Man is here?”

“He told Bonnie to call him Tony.” Beth rolls her eyes again. 

“We’re having a conversation about your language later,” he tells her, and she looks sheepish for half a second before Callie must say something that catches her attention. 

“Yes, I’m still here. No, I’m not sneaking a picture. He looks just like he does on tv. This is what you get for going to live in stupid Dallas, you know.”

She flops into a chair, mouth running a mile a minute, and Steve heads inside. 

It’s surreal, to say the least, to see Tony standing in the middle of the kitchen. Bonnie has indeed given him lemonade in a clear plastic cup featuring Woody and Buzz Lightyear, and she’s leaning against the counter, rapt with attention as she fiddles with her braid. The younger girls are sitting on the family room floor, homework half-abandoned as they listen to Tony talk. Elliot is seated at the breakfast table and working on math, but Steve can tell he’s listening too. 

Steve wonders where everyone else is, because Denise is out with Crystal and Charlie, but otherwise everyone is supposed to be home. 

“Really?” Bonnie breathes out, leaning in and twirling the ends of her hair around her finger. “That was real? That wasn’t CGI?”

“Nope,” Tony says with a smirk. “Really did fly into a wormhole.”

They catch each other's eyes, and Steve can see how Tony’s smirk falters. 

“And then this one here,” Tony adds, gesturing towards Steve with his cup, “got all dramatic about it. Acted like I’d died or something.”

Steve leans against the back door, arms crossed over his chest. He ignores the way his heart jumps at the sight of Tony in front of him. 

“Wow,” Bonnie says, still twirling. “That’s really your most memorable Iron Man moment?”

Steve looks away, focuses on Elliot who’s miserably failing at acting like he’s not hanging on Tony’s every word. 

“Definitely,” Tony says with his natural confidence. “It’s when we became the Avengers, don’t you think that’s pretty special? Right, Steve?”

Steve slides his eyes back to Tony, but then Serena is there and tugging on his shirt. He reaches for her, hefts her into his arms like it’s nothing, and she wraps her arms around his neck. 

“Is he really your friend?” she asks, quietly, and he’s reminded of the girl he met six months prior. 

“He is,” Steve says gently. 

“Because Denise and Josie always tell us not to talk to strangers,” Serena says, legs locked around his midsection. “And Beth just let him inside without checking, because Josie’s upstairs and Beth didn’t want to get her.”

“Denise and Josie are right about not talking to strangers,” Steve says, pushing her hair off her face. “And I’ll talk to Beth about letting people in without adult permission. Okay?”

“Okay,” Serena agrees, looking less anxious. 

“I’m here,” Josie says, and she’s got her eyebrows raised so Steve raises his right back. Serena’s grip loosens so he lets her go, and she heads back to the family room. “We expecting any other visitors?”

“Just the one,” Tony says, and he’s charming and Bonnie is trapped in his orbit as he shakes Josie’s hand. “Tony Stark.”

Josie indulges the handshake but looks at Steve like she can’t believe the guy, and he privately agrees with her. 

“Because that was up for debate,” she quips. “You come to steal our favorite house dad?”

“I’m your only house dad,” Steve tosses back, and Tony turns to look at him. Steve sighs and gestures to the front door. “Wanna go outside and talk?”

*

Tony looks about the same, just with more defined wrinkles. He looks good, still all compact muscle and Steve wonders if he still flies around in the suit to keep his endurance up. It had always been his favorite form of exercise. His hair has less gray than Steve remembers, but he’s not sure if that’s due to faulty memory or dye. As much as the years have worn on them, Tony could be a lot worse for wear. 

Steve pushes that all from his mind as he sees the sleek black car parked out front. 

“Rental,” Tony supplies, like he can read Steve’s mind. “Want to go for a drive?”

Against his better judgment, Steve gets into the passenger seat and adjusts the controls until he can stretch his legs out. Tony drives fast but smooth, and zips down the highway for a quarter of an hour before turning down the classic rock radio station and speaking. 

Some things never change, Steve thinks wryly. 

“I’m not going to apologize,” Tony says, his sunglasses hiding anything that could give anything away. “Because you’ve been a real moron, and I meant what I said.”

“Okay,” Steve says. 

“You did up and leave, like you always do when things get tough. Always acting in your own self-interest.”

“Okay,” he echoes, staring out the side window. He thinks he feels Tony’s eyes drilling into the side of his head, but doesn’t check. 

Tony huffs out a sigh after a few minutes of near silence. 

“That’s it? Okay? You’re not going to defend yourself with some all-important speech? You’re pretty good at those.”

“They don’t work with you,” Steve says with a shrug. “And I don’t want to argue.”

Tony taps his fingers against the steering wheel. 

Another fifteen minutes pass, and this time it’s Steve who speaks first. 

“Did you come here just to not apologize?”

Tony taps his fingers some more. 

“Are you just never going to come back?”

“I don’t belong there,” Steve says. 

“Of course you do,” Tony says instantly. “I asked Barnes to tell you - you’ve got a room.”

“What am I going to do?” Steve asks, feeling the anger begin to unfurl from deep within. “Move in and act like we’re capable of coexisting?”

“I don’t have to be there, if that’s the problem.”

“Sam told me about you and Pepper,” Steve says, a foul taste in the back of his throat. “Says you live at the new compound. I’m not going to kick you out of yet another home you built for yourself and your family.”

“They’re your family too,” Tony says, and he sounds as angry as Steve feels. “I could move to Malibu. Save myself the trouble of personally escorting Morgan to upstate New York every other week.”

Steve just shakes his head. “Don’t do that. Not for me.”

Tony drums his fingers against the wheel for a long time, in some nonsensical pattern, and Steve wants to scream at him to stop as the car picks up speed. They’re passing everyone else on the highway, almost out of the surrounding area entirely. Steve wants to go back to the house and huddle around the tv while everyone throws popcorn at each other, only for him to find it wedged between the couch cushions when he goes to bed later. 

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” Steve says to the window. “Meanwhile, you won’t let me do anything for you.”

“You’ve never tried to do anything for me,” Tony says, hard and brittle. “You want to talk about things you could have done for me? Why don’t we take a little trip back to Vienna? Or Leipzig. We could start there.”

Steve grits his teeth. 

“You think I don’t try to do anything for you?” he asks, veins coursing with rage, regret, and an infinite amount of frustration over their inability to ever be on the same page. “You think I didn’t stay away for you?”

“You were a wanted fugitive,” Tony bites out. “I kind of figured you were staying away so you didn’t end up arrested, or dead.”

It’s caustic and Steve’s tired of holding back. Clearly Tony is too, because the speedometer is hovering dangerously high. If there were anyone else on the interstate out here, he’d say something. 

“You’ve got no idea,” he says. “You can’t see past your own victim complex.”

“You’re one to talk,” Tony snaps. “You and your damn hero complex.”

“I leave because I know you never want me to stay!” Steve yells out, and he needs to get out of the car. “Jesus, Tony. It’s the only thing I can do! You’ve never let me fix anything, never accepted an apology. I’m not going to push you when you’ve got all the right into the world to hate me, but I’m not going to stick around to be crucified, either!”

Tony’s gripping the steering wheel so tight, and when Steve takes a breath, he realizes that they’re going too fast, even by Tony’s standards. 

He counts to five, and then points up ahead to a service road. 

“Pull over,” he says, and the car is too small for the both of them. 

“What - ”

“Just pull over,” Steve interrupts. “I can’t - I can’t be in here with you right now.”

*

Steve paces in the dry earth, hands pulling at his hair. 

Tony sits sideways in the car, feet on the ground and his head in his hands. 

It takes a while before Steve feels like he can control himself enough to go over and talk without exploding. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and Tony looks up in surprise. “I shouldn’t have acted like that.”

“I shouldn’t have, either,” Tony says. “Do you really think I never want you to stay?”

“If I wasn’t leaving, you were,” Steve points out. “After Loki, we all split. You left after Ultron. You didn’t exactly keep in touch. I got the message after that.”

Tony looks up at him, and suddenly he looks like he’s aged every single one of those years they spent apart. 

“I know I give more than I should,” he starts, but Steve cuts him off. 

“You shouldn’t give me more than you can afford to.”

“I can afford plenty,” Tony says, confused. “Billionaire, remember?”

“No,” Steve says, because this is important. He reaches out and stops just shy of the center of Tony’s chest. “You shouldn’t give me more than _you_ can afford to.”

Tony just looks at him. “Is that why you’re here? You couldn’t afford to give any more?”

“Not with things the way they were,” Steve says, hands in his pockets, taking a step back. “Not with you - ”

His throat almost closes up in panic.

“Not with me what?” Tony asks, curious. 

“Not with things the way they were,” Steve says, because he doesn’t know how to say it all. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. He shouldn't. 

“I thought things were okay,” Tony says, and Steve hates how he can hear the hint of desperation there. He hates when Tony gets like this: so generous, so eager to please even when it’s to his detriment. 

“Tony,” he says, needing him to understand this if they’re ever going to be able to be in the same room together without ripping each other to shreds. “I’ve only ever let you lay down the rules for us. Because me? I’m okay with it, whatever it is. Whether you want a little or a lot from me, I’ve left it up to you. The Accords were the only time - the _only_ time - I couldn’t do that, and look where it got us. So it’s up to you. It’s always been up to you, and it always will be.”

“I don’t understand,” Tony says, brows furrowed. 

Steve wants to throw his hands in the air and give up. 

“You recovered,” he says, and he runs a hand through his hair. “And you’ve got your people, and that’s fine. You recovered last time, and you didn’t need me. You didn’t need me this time either. And that’s fine. I don’t need for you to need me. But I couldn’t do it anymore, Tony. I couldn’t sit around and watch you move forward while we still weren’t on speaking terms.”

When Tony speaks, his voice cracks. “You think I didn’t need you?”

“You had Pepper,” Steve says helplessly, and the sun is setting rapidly, the clouds turning from fluffy white to mottled shades of gray. “And Rhodes, and this time you had Morgan. I wasn’t going to insert myself where - ”

“Where what?” Tony demands, and he finally stands up. “Where you weren’t wanted? Goddamnit Rogers, why are you always like this - ”

He breaks off with a cry, and Steve doesn’t know what to do. 

“I’ve been asking myself for months,” Tony says, and the words are the kind that should rage against the dying light, but instead they're just resigned. When they look at each other, Steve can feel the exhaustion settling in. “I’ve been asking myself what I did wrong. Did I wait too long to give back the shield? Should I have had Pepper insist you stay with us? Should I have chased you down as soon as I knew you left town?”

Steve tries to speak, but Tony forges on. 

“Of course I needed you. It’s like you forget everything I’ve ever said. Do you remember what I said when I came back from space?”

“Together,” Steve says, feeling so choked up and miserable that he barely gets the word out. 

Tony jabs a finger in his chest. 

“Together,” he says. “And yeah, maybe that time I was the one who left. But I thought I made it clear this time around. I didn’t want it to be like that ever again. When I came back? When I brought your shield and solved time travel for you and wore the gauntlet? Did none of that make it painfully, abundantly clear that I intended for the rest of it to be together?”

Steve can’t breathe, can only shake his head and feel like maybe, just maybe, this conversation is happening years too late. 

“It all went to shit when we were apart,” Tony says, hand falling to his side. “I needed you. Of _course_ I needed you, even when I acted like I didn’t. I didn’t want to need you, I wanted to kick your perfect ass, but of course I _needed_ you.”

“You don’t need me now,” Steve says. “Sam and Buck and Rhodes - ”

“Yeah,” Tony says, deflating. “Yeah, what other excuses do you have, Rogers?”

“I can’t leave these kids,” he says, and it’s not an excuse, and Tony must see that because his expression softens. It’s nearly dark now, the angles of Tony’s face transformed into gentle lines. “But like I said. I’ve always left it up to you. All you have to do is be straight with me.”

Tony nods, more to himself than anything as he leans against the frame of the car and strokes his jaw with his thumb and forefinger. 

“So don’t leave the kids,” he says, lifting a shoulder. 

“Tony,” Steve says, and now he’s scrambling for the bare truth that’s slipping away faster than sand in an hourglass. “Let me do things for you. For once.”

Tony takes off his sunglasses and polishes them on the bottom of his shirt. 

“Get in the car,” he says. “They’ve got to be missing you.”

*

By the time they get back to the house, Steve’s told Tony all about everyone. They pick up dinner on the way, and the kids are all thrilled to open styrofoam boxes full of pasta and garlic bread. There are containers of soup, cannolis for dessert, and Tony holds court like a king, knowing everyone’s name and never slipping up. 

“I’m taking physics next year,” Elliot tells Tony, holding back how thrilled he is to be in the presence of the smartest man in the country, if not the world. “I don’t like chemistry too much, but it’s not that hard.”

“Speak for yourself,” Beth scowls. 

“I used to think chemistry was boring,” Tony says. “But then I built a particle accelerator in my garage.”

Elliot stares, wide-eyed and impressed even when - “What’s a particle accelerator?”

Tony slots into the after-dinner assembly line with ease, drying the washed dishes that Crystal and Hannah give him before handing them off to Manny and Lance to put away. The adults do their best to keep everyone to their usual schedule, but Tony is new and bright and shiny, and no one wants to get ready for bed. 

“Okay,” Denise relents. “One movie, if everyone gets ready for bed. But then it’s to your rooms for the night.”

Steve ends up in the middle of the couch as Ratatouille begins to play on the tv, with Charlie on his left, Christina in his lap, and Beth on his right. Bonnie wiggles her way on the floor near Tony, who’s got Jackson and Serena leaning into him. The older boys are still acting like they’re too cool to hang all over Tony, but the way they’re watching what they’ve previously deemed a “kiddie movie” while they could be doing anything else gives them away. 

It’s hard not to be enchanted with the way Tony seamlessly integrates himself into the house. Even though Steve is tired from the day he’s had and the toll their drive and conversation has taken on him, he can’t look away as Tony listens to Ben try to explain some of the finer points of the plot. Alexa butts in here and there to explain things her way, and Tony gives them each his full attention. 

Steve remembers what that used to feel like, and how rare it had been. It had been like winning a contest on the radio, something that you didn’t think would ever happen until it did, and it was a thousand times more exciting than it had any reason to be. 

Serena clings to Tony once the movie ends, and Steve tries not to be jealous. Tony lifts her up and Steve can see the strain it requires of him, until she’s leaning against his chest and petting his face. 

“You should tell Steve to wear his beard like this,” she says, so tired that she’s getting delirious. 

“I like Steve’s beard the way it is!” Alexa exclaims, panicked. 

“So do I, kiddo,” Tony says, extending a palm for a high five that Alexa returns. “Besides. He doesn’t have the patience for this kind of precision work.”

Steve doesn’t watch the last of the kids gradually make their way up to their rooms as Josie threatens them with bologna sandwiches for lunch tomorrow if they don’t go to sleep immediately. Instead he just makes up his bed as he does every night, and ignores how Denise eyes him from where she’s turned off the tv. 

“Just say whatever it is you’re going to say.”

Denise just watches, watches him fluff up his pillows and set them against the back of the couch. 

“Surprised he’s not at some fancy-pants hotel right now.”

Steve just shrugs. As if he hasn’t been thinking the exact same thing.

“Behave,” Denise says then, finally stalking across the room to the stairs, like a cheetah after its prey. “We’ve got kid ears everywhere.”

“Is that what you tell Josie?” Steve asks, and Denise flips him a middle finger before disappearing to her room. 

There’s the flush of the toilet in the downstairs bathroom, and Tony appears a minute later. Steve’s set up for the night, reclined against a pillow with a book in his lap, and they stare at each other. 

“The kids like you,” Steve settles on. “Not that I expected any less. You’re always good with people, when you want to be.”

“They’re good kids,” Tony says, and he’s hovering, swanning around the family room and peering at picture frames, picking up knick-knacks and turning them over in his hands. 

Steve folds the book closed, index finger marking his page. 

“You planning on staying the night?”

Tony scratches the back of his neck. “I should have asked, shouldn’t I?”

“Yeah,” Steve agrees, and then he twice pats the empty stretch of thin mattress beside him. It’s a small motion but it holds the weight of the universe, and Steve’s heart pounds away in double-time.

Tony doesn’t come right away, now running a finger along the top of the tv. 

“Borrowed your toothbrush. Saw it in the bathroom, figured you wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t,” Steve says. “Do you need something to sleep in?”

Tony turns around, considering. 

“If you’re offering.”

So Steve dog-ears his place in his book and gets up to hand Tony a neatly folded white undershirt and sweats. They’ll be too long, workable at the waist because of the drawstring and Steve’s proportions, but they’ll do. 

Tony disappears back to the bathroom and Steve settles in again, but can’t bring himself to open the book.

He wants to cry. He wants Tony to leave and he never wants to let him go, and he wants to get a hold of some Pym particles and go back to 2012 and live another life that doesn’t feel more bitter than sweet most of the time. He wants to press a hand to his chest and remind himself that he’s alive, that they’re alive, and there could have been more casualties than there were, and the prime example of that is in the other room and undressing right now. 

Steve just digs nails into palms and stares at the front of his book until it becomes a blur. 

Until the mattress dips and Steve looks up, jolted from his maudlin thoughts at the sight of Tony rubbing his hands together. 

“Who uses almond hand lotion?” Tony asks, and he looks fresh and clean and ready for bed at the end of an appropriately long day. 

“We bought a multipack,” Steve says after a moment, thrown by the question. “There’s vanilla and coconut-lime. I think Crystal picked it out.”

“Nice,” Tony says appreciatively, and then he’s under the covers. “Do you mind if I get the light, or - ”

It’s a formality, really, because the lamp sits on the side table next to Steve. He sets his book next to it before clicking it off, and the room plunges into darkness, lit only by moonlight coming through the back door. 

They both move around as little as possible, trying to get comfortable without disrupting the delicate balance between them, and maintaining as much distance between them as they can. Steve doesn’t want to push, but he has so many questions, and he parses through them methodically until he finds one that feels adequate without prying. Then, he listens for Tony’s breathing. 

He’d picked it up the first time they’d happened to be forced to sleep in the vicinity of each other. The team had avoided that kind of intimacy, but when they’d been hunting down HYDRA, it had become unavoidable. Only when necessary, and in shifts, and almost never Tony and Steve at the same time. But the first time, in the back of the Quinjet after a particularly long and grueling excursion while Clint piloted them home, Steve had laid down and paid attention to Tony’s breathing before falling asleep with military efficiency. 

The way it’s never even when he’s awake, unconsciously dancing around the same way Tony does when he’s on the move. Steve knows it will eventually even out before slowing down, turning to the softest snores that barely even count as such. For now, he just measures the length of each inhale, and knows it’s short enough that he won’t do too much damage if he speaks. 

“How long were you planning on staying?”

Tony makes a noise, somewhere between thoughtful and deprecating.

“Didn’t originally plan on staying the night. But I didn’t plan on arguing with you, either.”

They keep their voices low, the conversation certainly not what Denise had in mind when she’d warned him, but Steve still doesn’t want to plant false seeds in anyone’s mind. 

“You gonna leave tomorrow, then?”

Tony’s breathing is that alert off-beat staccato, and that in itself grounds Steve enough that he can resist the urge to fist the sheets in his boundless frustration, the agony of having no idea what’s going on and where he belongs in it. He hates that Tony can come along and shake the very foundation of the almost-home he’s helped build, and more than anything, he hates that more than a decade of knowing each other has cemented the fact that there’s nothing he can do about it. 

Steve has never been able to do a single thing to point the two of them in the right direction. Tony is the wind, forcing them wherever he decides, and Steve has always been powerless to protest, to try and change course. The one time he had, he’d lost as much ground as he’d gained. 

He’s long since made his peace with it. There’s no use in thinking about what he could have done differently, or better. Not since none of it makes a damn bit of difference to the one person Steve would do things differently for. 

“Probably,” Tony says, sounding very far away, the single word ringing in Steve’s ears. “It’s my weekend with Morgan, and she’s got a classmate’s birthday party. Didn’t want to keep her from going.”

Steve nods, knowing that Tony can’t see him, but unable to speak. 

They don’t say goodnight, and it’s a long time before Tony’s breathing begins to even out. 

*

When Steve’s internal clock wakes him, he doesn’t want to get up. He’s blissfully warm, tucked around a source of heat that he wants to nuzzle into. He almost goes to do so, his cheek ready to rub into soft curls the way a cat curls around a particularly excellent piece of furniture, when the rest of his awareness comes flooding in. 

Somehow during the night they’ve found their way to each other. Steve’s body wraps around Tony’s so entirely, face pressed to the back of his head so close that the faint scent of shampoo tickles the inside of his nose. His arm hangs around Tony’s midsection, loose but protective, and Tony’s bare feet are pressed to Steve’s ankles where his pajama pants have ridden up. Steve’s other arm serves as a pillow for Tony’s head, slow and even puffs of air turning the inside bend of his elbow humid. 

Steve is unsurprised despite his racing pulse, and he catalogues the location of all their body parts. 

The same thing had happened the only other time they shared a bed. Tony had insisted on the luxury of the guest room at Clint’s farmhouse, and with Bruce too tetchy after everything that had gone down, no one else had been willing to bunk with him. Natasha had been in a world of her own and Steve had respected that enough to steer clear. 

He had been tired, and knew that he couldn’t take care of his team if he didn’t take care of himself, so he passed on a pile of blankets on a too-short couch. Tony had stretched out in the bed obnoxiously, complaining about Steve’s long limbs until they were bickering like children. It wasn’t until Steve brought down the metaphorical hammer that they shut up and closed their eyes, knowing that they had a rough road ahead of them if they were going to defeat Ultron. 

For years, Steve wondered if the way they’d woken up had changed anything. If it had nudged a cog in the wheel, if it had a butterfly effect on the way things played out. He wondered if it played a part in Tony declining to stay at the compound with them. In the dark of night, he dared to wonder if it had anything to do with Pepper and Tony’s temporary separation. He wondered if they should have talked about it, if anything would have come of it, if maybe it would have made Tony feel like he could stay and then Steve wouldn’t have ended up keeping secrets because he was always so scared of disrupting the tenuous relationship between them. 

Now, Steve just breathes in sandalwood shampoo and Tony, taking note of how different it is from last time. A lot has changed, and Steve thinks that his mistake before had been in guiltily springing back in bed, realizing a second too late that Tony had been awake and lying there in stillness. 

They’d both mumbled at the floor until they’d gone their separate ways, and Steve had wondered. 

He contemplates slipping away, gently and slowly until they never have to touch each other ever again. 

But Tony’s breathing shifts, the snores giving way to the easy pattern of deep, even breaths. It’s small, but Steve doesn’t want to risk it. He can’t stand what might happen if he reacts the same way he reacted last time, and so he forcibly relaxes every muscle in his body. Besides, there’s no legitimacy to the possibility that sleeping together had changed anything before, so there’s no reason to worry about anything changing this time. 

When he hears the first soft snuffle, the sign that Tony’s falling back into a deep sleep instead of potentially waking, Steve nuzzles in. It’s not yet light out, and the kids won’t be awake for a while. 

So he falls asleep again, warm and trying to convince himself that something as insignificant as sharing a bed doesn’t have the power to change the universe. 

*

A blow to the stomach is what wakes him the second time. He’s bleary-eyed but snaps to attention immediately, and Serena is scrambling off of him as Josie yells at her. 

“Sorry,” Serena says, with an innocent smile. “But it’s late!”

It’s not that late, Steve thinks, as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes and rubs a hand over Serena’s head. He gets up and takes in the usual morning chaos, lost for how he managed to sleep through as much as he did, but then stops in his tracks. 

There’re boxes of donuts stacked on the counter and every kid looks like they’ve had at least one. Denise is packing lunches and Beth is passing her plastic cling-wrapped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and heading up the assembly line is Tony, still in borrowed clothing. He’s spreading peanut butter on honey-wheat bread, nodding along as Manny talks his ear off while spreading the jelly. Bonnie looks distinctly unhappy with that situation, scowling as she discovers she can’t position herself within Tony’s line of sight, not with Alexa and Charlie fighting over a chocolate donut. 

“I’m pulling rank here,” Steve says, plucking the donut out of the box and taking a large bite. It’s just faintly warm still and Steve doesn’t have to think on it for more than a second to know that the donuts are Tony’s doing, just chewing fluffy-yeasty pastry and taking a moment to savor the rich chocolate on his tongue. 

He’s so distracted by it that he nearly misses the way Tony’s eyes dart over to him, missing the jar with his knife before going back to the task at hand. 

Steve wonders if he’s got chocolate glaze on his chin. 

“Steve!” Alexa gasps. “But - I - ”

“Alexa,” Denise says sharply. “Charlie. That’s what you get for fighting. Let Steve have a donut.”

The two of them look like they want to argue, but Steve just spins the box around to look at what’s left. 

“What about vanilla sprinkle?” he asks. “That’s a classic.”

“There’s more in the box underneath,” Tony calls, and when Steve looks up, Tony’s definitely staring. He rubs at his chin, comes away with nothing, then shrugs it off and opens up the box underneath. He finds two more chocolate glazed there but makes Alexa and Charlie split one, especially after Crystal informs him that they’ve already had two apiece. Charlie nearly smacks his sister for that. 

It turns out that Tony’s managed to be sweet-talked into driving the teenage boys to school, and Steve loses him as he gets pulled into an argument between Jackson and Serena about who gets to play with the Nintendo on the way to school. Josie has to intervene, pushing them out the door so she can walk them to the bus stop. 

By the time the house is quiet (the driving rotation means that normally Denise would drive the high school kids, but Tony’s unknowingly thrown a wrench in those plans so she packs up the girls and begrudgingly allows the middle schoolers to squeeze in as well, since they start later), he realizes that he’s not sure whether Tony plans on coming back or not. 

He cleans the kitchen and tidies the living room, and refuses to feel anything when he doesn’t see anything that Tony could have left behind. Rather than dwell on it, he gets dressed and heads out for a run. At least this way, he can stave off the inevitable realization that somehow, he’s ruined things again. 

When he gets back to the house, it’s still quiet. Josie likes to go to the library and read law texts, wanting to be ahead of the curve in the fall, and Denise had mentioned grocery shopping. Steve drinks an entire glass of water in less than a minute, and then refills the cup and adds ice before sitting down at the counter. He’d methodically thrown out or cleaned any sign that Tony had ever been here, and now he almost regrets it. 

The gutters need cleaning and Steve should probably shower and get ready to walk to the home improvement store so he can get supplies to patch the tear in the screen door, a result of Manny and Zeke’s continued football practice the previous afternoon. He stays in the middle of the kitchen though, long past when he’s caught his breath. 

The phone on the wall rings, just as he’s about to head to the bathroom. 

“I’m sending you a cell phone,” Tony’s voice comes, and Steve can hear noise in the background. 

“You’re not on a plane yet?”

“Getting there,” Tony says. “Wanted to show off for the boys, walk them in and everything. Did a little show and tell in Elliot’s chem class. You guys have awful traffic here, I’m calling you so I don’t end up rear-ending someone out of pure spite.”

“I don’t need a phone,” Steve says. 

Tony sighs. 

“I’m calling to say goodbye.”

“You could’ve done that earlier,” Steve says, and it’s unnecessary because they both know it. He says it anyway, and Tony responds anyway. 

“I know,” he says. “I could’ve. But I didn’t want to, and I’ve got to get to Morgan.”

Steve knows that “didn’t want to” can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, and he wouldn’t know where to begin even if he wanted to. 

“I’m serious,” Tony says. “I’m sending you a phone. I don’t want to have to deal with a landline and sixteen other people when I’m trying to get in touch with you.”

“There’s nothing you need to get in touch for,” Steve points out, but the words feel flimsy. 

“Might just want to call and chat sometimes,” Tony says, and the words ping familiar, but this time, Steve embraces them with everything he’s got. 

“Alright,” Steve says, injecting the words with as much earnestness as he can muster, considering his disappointment at the lack of a proper goodbye. “You’ll call and chat.”

“I will,” Tony says, and it feels like a vow of sorts. 

*

That afternoon, Steve’s in the middle of patching the screen door when Bonnie steps out onto the small screened-in porch. 

“Hey,” he greets her. “Need help with homework?”

“No,” she says. Steve puts everything down, relaxing into a fully seated position so he can look up at her, see her nervously toss her curtain of hair over her shoulder. 

“What’s up?” 

Bonnie looks past Steve, into the backyard, and refuses to make eye contact as she talks. 

“Tony - he told us we could call him Tony. It’s okay that we call him that, right?”

“Right,” he assures her. “Just like you call me Steve.”

She nods. “He’s pretty cool.”

“He is,” Steve agrees. “Kind of everything he’s cracked up to be. Isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” she says. “But, uh - ”

Steve frowns, wondering if he actually does need to be concerned about her harmless crush. 

“When I came down this morning,” she says, fiddling with her hair, “I saw you two on the couch.”

Oh. Realization strikes, hot and embarrassing. 

“Yes,” he says carefully. 

“I think I woke him up,” she says, and she’s blushing. “And he asked if I wanted to pick up donuts for breakfast.”

“The donuts were a great idea,” he says diplomatically. 

She’s still avoiding Steve’s eyes. “You two - I know that sexuality can be complicated these days. But I thought that, maybe I should mind my own business, but I wasn’t going to tell anyone and no one else saw anyway, and - ”

Steve rescues her from whatever tangled web her imagination has been weaving all day.

“Tony and I are old friends,” he says, because she’s sixteen and he’s not going to get into a decade of interpersonal dynamics with her. “I guess we move around when we sleep. It’s not a sexual thing.”

The expression on Bonnie’s face tells him that whatever she needed to hear, he hasn’t said it, so he tries again. 

“People get lonely, Bonnie,” he says, keeping his voice gentle and wondering how the hell parents deal with their teenagers. “Sometimes having someone else there helps. People need other people, whether they realize it or not. I forget that a lot. But Tony’s an old friend, and him being here reminded me.”

“So it’s not….”

Bonnie trails off, and they both can fill in the rest of the sentence.

“No.” Steve shakes his head. “It’s not.”

“Okay,” Bonnie says, and she looks like she wants to say more, but doesn’t. 

“Okay,” Steve says, and he goes to pick up the patch that he’s cut to size, but Bonnie is saying his name so he stops. 

“Steve,” she says. “Do you - can I have a hug?”

He doesn’t have to think about it before he’s on his feet, arms extended. Another thing he often forgets is how these older kids know what they’re missing, and where all the gaps in their lives might be. So he lets Bonnie cling to him for as long as she needs, gently rocking back and forth. 

“I love you,” she mumbles into his chest. 

For a moment Steve thinks it’s going to be terrifying, that he’s going to lose the ability to breathe and he’ll freeze up inappropriately and reveal himself as the worst kind of person in the entire world. But that doesn’t happen, and he just leans back a little to look at the kid in his arms, and smiles at her wobbly smile and slightly watery eyes. 

“I love you, too,” he says truthfully. 

“We got really lucky with you,” she says, stepping back out of his embrace, and he lets her go as she rubs at her eyes with the inside of her wrists. 

Steve thinks that he’s the one who got lucky. 

*

A couple of days later, a neat little cell phone gets delivered. It’s probably the same as what Tony’s got, judging from the software and design, and there’s precisely one contact already installed. 

And a couple of days after that, Tony calls the landline and asks for Josie, and they talk a whole lot of legal jargon about some trust that he’s set up for her and Denise and the kids. There’s talk of monthly balances and deposits and Steve just helps Hannah with her vocabulary words and listens. 

When Josie looks at him, after she’s hung up the phone, she just shakes her head. 

“He told me to tell you to use that phone he got you,” she says, incredulous. “Do I want to know?”

Steve just shrugs. He’s not sure that he even knows. 

*

He tells Elliot that he loves him when it’s Steve’s day to pick up the high schoolers and Elliot gets to the car first. There’s modest bragging about an A on his history test, and Steve looks at him as he says it. Elliot looks away and mumbles it in return, and Steve lets him pick the music for the drive home. 

He tells Christina when she spikes a mild fever and has to stay home from school. He strokes her hair as she rests her head on his lap and watches daytime cartoons, mouth purple from the popsicle he let her have for lunch. She’s half asleep but clings to him, and Steve knows. 

When he tells Charlie, it’s because he's is upset and frustrated about bullies at school. He comes home running his mouth about some kids in his class who wear expensive sneakers and trip kids on the playground, and Steve takes him down to a public park to throw a ball around and slip in what life was like for a teenage Steve Rogers. Charlie brushes it off, but when Denise comes to him late that night and tells him she loves him for loving her family, he tells her that he loves her and it’s his family too. 

He means it. 

*

Tony is too cool to text, too busy, and FRIDAY doesn’t like running interference that way. 

So Steve calls. 

The first time is awkward until Steve asks about Morgan. He learns that her current favorite color is aquamarine and she loves penguins. She’s going through a phase where she’s scribbling on everything, and Pepper is fighting a losing battle when it comes to keeping her artistic tendencies confined to appropriate surfaces. Last week she took scented markers to Pepper’s snow-white duvet, and Tony confides that he thinks she does it on purpose. According to him, she’s too smart for there to be any other reason, and Steve secretly agrees. 

Tony calls and Steve tells him about texting with Sam, who is over the moon about finally being able to keep in touch with some more consistency. They compare stories about the goings-on at the compound, figuring out where the truth has been stretched, and Tony exaggerates just as badly as Sam does. Orange juice has been banned from the premises after an altercation involving Red Wing and a visit from Peter Parker, and there’s minimal twinging in Steve’s chest cavity when he laughs as Tony defends Peter’s honor and claims that Barnes had been just as guilty. 

Steve talks about Hannah wanting to straighten her curls, and Tony asks if he’s still shunning all shaving implements. There’s a bit of daydreaming about what it would be like to run his fingers through Tony’s fluffy hair, but he gets the impulse under control as Tony asks if he’s ever seen a pair of modern-day clippers. He pretends like he hasn’t, makes Tony describe how the mechanism works, but something must give him away because Tony clues in five minutes later and calls him a troll. 

They don’t talk about anything serious, and Steve thinks about what he’d give to share a bed with Tony again. He wonders if the universe hears him, because Tony asks what he’s doing the last week in March. 

“I’d like for Morgan to know you beyond the creepy shrine Barnes has got going in the compound.”

Steve rolls his eyes because Tony has sent pictures of said shrine, which is really just a couple of pictures from their childhood and then more recently. They’re part of a whole picture wall in the residential area, a concept that Laura had passed onto Wanda, and Bucky’s additions had come at the high cost of infinite teasing. 

But then the weight of the words sink in. 

“What were you thinking?” 

“You could come upstate,” Tony says with practiced nonchalance, and the thought of this being something that he’s had to work up to gives Steve a funny feeling in his stomach. 

“I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” Steve admits, taken aback by his own honesty. 

“Then we can come there,” Tony offers immediately, like he’d anticipated needing multiple options. “Morgan might like a multi-night sleepover, she’d love Serena. Or you can come to Malibu. I’ve got her the entire spring break, but I know Pepper is bummed they can’t spend that time together. We can dump the kid one day, take a field trip or something.”

“I think I’d like that, actually,” Steve says, thinking of how he’d meant to travel the country before happening upon Denise and Josie. “I can’t remember if I’ve ever been to California before.”

“Can’t remember,” Tony snorts under his breath. “As if there’s anything he can’t remember.”

“Is that okay?” Steve asks. 

“Yeah, Steve,” Tony says, and he sounds like he’s smiling. “That’s okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many thanks to everyone giving this a chance. I know the abundance of OC's might not make it an easy read, but I really appreciate anyone taking their time to read/drop kudos/comment/etc. 
> 
> This is fully written, and I plan on updating regularly.


	3. Chapter 3

There are so many palm trees. Steve tries not to stare in awe, but there’s something about being alongside the ocean that makes his insides feel inflated with helium. 

He’d been worried about leaving, had asked Denise and Josie so many times if they were sure it was okay. At the end they’d gotten sick of it, and Beth had nearly thrown Steve’s old duffel at him as he got dropped off at the airport. 

“I’d like to get going,” she said, clapping her hands together, the universal signal for him to chop chop. Denise was in the passenger seat, hiding a giggle in her shoulder while Manny checked his mirrors and made sure no one was in danger of shooing the car out of the departures lane. “I’ve got a bus to catch, in case you forgot. Callie says she got tickets to a soccer game, and I don’t want to be late. She just got her license, and her step-brother’s wife is letting us borrow the car.”

Steve had forced her out of the car, holding her tight and making her promise to be careful and come back in one piece. 

“Maybe you’re the one we need to worry about,” she said wickedly. “Don’t get any tattoos while you’re gone! Love you!”

He misses everyone already, and he’s barely been away, but Tony distracts him as they drive further out of the city towards his house. 

“Rebuilt it after Ultron,” Tony says. This car is red and obnoxious, and so very Tony that it warms Steve down to his bones. “I put it off for a while, but then Pepper drew up plans. I was going to let her keep it, but she wanted a blank slate when she moved back here. Understandable, of course. You’ll see her place, we’re picking up Morgan first. I could’ve flown you private, you know. Have you land somewhere a bit more discreet. Not that I’m complaining, of course.”

He’s babbling, and Steve gets it. He’s nervous too. 

“I’m sorry about Pepper,” Steve says, before Tony can open his mouth again. 

“Don’t be,” Tony says, and he’s so dismissive that Steve’s confused. “She’s been a good sport through it all, didn’t try to bury me in legal fees or a custody battle. We juggle Morgan around like a little hot potato, but it works, and she’s not demanding to see a therapist yet, so I figure we’re doing alright.”

“But still,” Steve says, trying to figure out why Tony seems so unbothered by divorcing the only person he’d been in a relationship with since before Steve knew him. “There’s a lot of history there.”

Tony sighs and turns off the main highway. The road narrows, but the palms are just as tall and skinny. “Sometimes I think all that history was what held us together at the end. There's a lot of love there - don’t get me wrong. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that love isn’t necessarily a deciding factor. Neither of us wanted to be alone for a while there. The last time we were apart - well, it didn’t go so hot.”

Steve remembers learning of their separation, back when he and Tony had been at each other’s necks in the worst way, and doesn’t even briefly entertain how all those factors could have influenced each other. 

“So why divorce now?” Steve asks. “I don’t mean to - if that’s rude, you don’t have to answer.”

“I don’t mind,” Tony says, changing the radio station as a new song starts to play. “After Strange fixed me up, once the dust settled - ouch, that saying has a whole new meaning now, _yikes_ \- it just wasn’t the same. And we talked about it, thought about co-parenting under the same roof. Because hey, who doesn’t like living with one of their best friends, and their favorite kid?”

Steve nods along, definitely not thinking about what sharing a bed with Tony is like. He’s not the jealous type, and he definitely doesn’t think about how it might compare to what Pepper and Tony had over the years. 

“But Pepper deserves another shot,” Tony says. “She deserves more than being tied to me for the rest of her life.”

“What about you?” Steve asks, without thinking, because he’s dumb like that sometimes. 

“What about me?”

“Don’t you deserve another shot?”

Tony’s mouth presses into a grim line, and Steve prefers his laugh lines. 

“I think I used up all mine,” Tony says, and then they’re at a very nice house with a gate that Tony has to use a fingerprint to get past. “Pepper refuses to let me install FRIDAY, or anyone else,” he explains as they roll around the drive. “Warns me of the dangers of dependence on tech, which come on, after all these years? Sometimes I just think she misses JARVIS too much.”

Steve understands, because he also misses JARVIS too much. 

Pepper’s house is elegantly bare and white, with bright splashes of art on the walls and clean angles everywhere. Steve thinks that in another universe, he would have detested modern art a little less and learned to appreciate it with Pepper. As it is, in this universe, they’ve never had much to say to each other besides the usual polite niceties. 

Nothing has changed, as Pepper emerges from a wide hallway. She’s barefoot and as beautiful as ever and doesn’t look surprised by the extra body, but that doesn’t put Steve at ease even as they modestly hug in greeting. 

“She’s packing,” Pepper explains, inviting them into the kitchen where she’s got a half-filled glass of white wine. She offers one to Tony, who declines and begins investigating the underside of some countertop appliance, and then to Steve, who accepts because it won’t hurt and will give him something to do with his hands. “She’s in some weird independent phase,” Pepper continues as she lifts onto her tiptoes to retrieve a minimalistic stemmed glass from a white lacquered cabinet. 

“No idea where she gets that from,” Steve comments, and Tony huffs out as he pulls something apart. 

“Don’t you dare ruin that,” Pepper says, eyes on the bottle as she pours. “I had it imported from Italy.”

“Well, if it’s _Italian,_ ” Tony says, and Steve catches him rolling his eyes, and hides his grin in his wine. 

Morgan slouches into the kitchen, looking like she’s five going on twenty-five, and eyes Steve as she goes for the refrigerator. Her backpack is some silvery sparkly thing so full it looks like she’s barely gotten the zipper shut. 

“Sweetheart,” Pepper says, sipping her wine as she watches her daughter pull a yogurt smoothie off a shelf. “Do you remember Steve?”

“Yes,” Morgan says, sounding affronted at the insinuation that there’s anything she can’t remember. 

Steve lowers his glass. 

“Hi, Morgan,” he greets her, unsure of how to interact with her, despite the fact that he’s got a Serena and a Christina a few states back, and he does just fine with them. This feels almost like a test, one that he really needs to ace for some reason. 

She’s still looking at him, unscrewing the cap of her drink and sipping while she does, and it’s disconcerting to say the least.

“Daddy won’t take me on the roller coasters,” Morgan says, and Steve nods along importantly. “You look like you’re tall enough for the roller coasters.”

“I am,” Steve says, and he’s got no idea what she’s talking about, but it’s got Pepper pressing a hand to her temple and Tony snorting as he continues whatever he’s doing to the Italian appliance. It looks vaguely espresso-related, but seeing as Steve doesn’t bother very much with coffee, he can’t be sure. 

“Will you take me on the roller coasters?” Morgan asks, and she’s got a mango-pineapple mustache. 

“We’re not dragging Steve to Disney,” Tony says, and he glances at Steve in a way that indicates the reasoning behind that statement is more complicated than he’s willing to divulge in front of Morgan. “I’m using a veto on that one.”

Morgan plants a hand on her hip, nails a chipped electric magenta, and frowns. “Why not?”

“Because I’m an adult and get to make the decisions around here. Also, tickets are expensive. So unless you recently came across some buried treasure or have been negotiating stock options, that’s a veto.”

Pepper rubs at her temple some more and walks away muttering. Steve drinks his wine, which is really quite good, and watches Morgan puzzle out what her father is saying. 

“I get an allowance,” she says, putting her yogurt drink on the counter and pulling her backpack off her shoulders, unzipping the smaller pocket. “I’ve got dollars. Here, look. How much is this? Enough for Disneyland?”

She holds up a fistful of crumpled bills and Tony laughs, pushing the espresso machine back to its proper place and crouching in front of his daughter. Steve can see the twinge it causes him, but he doesn’t even hesitate as he pulls the cash from Morgan and flattens it all out. 

“She’s got twenty-one dollars,” Tony says, and he’s looking over Morgan’s head to Steve. “What do you think, Steve? You want to splurge on some street tacos for dinner?”

Morgan scowls and snatches back her money. 

“I want to go on the roller coasters,” she demands, and Tony uses a hand on the edge of the counter to stand up. Steve wants to help him, a firm but gentle hand under an arm, but just swirls the wine around. 

“Veto,” Tony repeats, bopping her on the nose, and she ducks out of the way and grabs her drink. “We’ll run over more viable options on the way home.”

Morgan refuses to hug Pepper goodbye and just heads for the front door, which must be a common enough occurrence that Pepper doesn’t seem too bothered by it. 

“Have fun with that,” she says, nodding towards where Morgan is already outside, the door slamming behind her. “Here I was, hoping she’d take after me and not Tony, and look where that got me.”

“I'm greatly offended,” Tony says, pressing a kiss to her cheek. Pepper accepts it reluctantly, and Steve drains the wine and places the glass to the side of the spotless sink. “Tell me if it starts making funny noises again, I’ll come over with a real tool kit.”

“I didn’t even tell you it was making funny noises,” Pepper protests. 

“Thanks for the wine,” Steve says, and then he’s kissing Pepper’s cheek, and it feels awkward as Tony follows Morgan out the door. “And thank you.”

“For what?” Pepper asks, eyebrows arched.

Steve shrugs, not knowing how to express what he’s thinking. “For trusting me with your daughter for a week,” he tries, and Pepper’s polite skepticism makes him want to backtrack. 

“Like I had a choice,” she says, and it could simply be a commentary on how Tony is the way he is _,_ but he suspects there’s more behind it than that. “Just be good with both of them, alright?”

“I will,” Steve says, and he doesn’t get it, but maybe he’s not supposed to. 

She leans up, on her tiptoes, and brushes his cheek with her lips. It’s near meaningless, a courteous social gesture, but there’s something conflicting in her expression when her bare feet settle back on the polished floor. 

“Tony doesn’t like to be kept waiting,” she says, waving him forward, and she stays several paces behind as he goes to leave. “Enjoy your time together.”

Steve feels like he’s missed something. But before he can begin to think about it too hard, he’s in the car and Morgan is digging her toes into the back of his seat and demanding Tony play the soundtrack of some movie she’s obsessed with, and there’s a never-ending stream of chatter and talk of what’s for dinner and heated debates over ice cream flavors and - 

And it feels like Steve can handle this. 

*

Later that day, as the last of the sun clings to the silhouettes of the palm trees, Tony wordlessly offers Steve a beer and presses against the balcony with him. Tony’s house is warmer than Pepper’s, modern but different with all the wood and dark coloring, and Steve likes it just as much as he does the tang of salt in his nose. Morgan is on the other end of the deck, splashing around in the pool even as the evening chill arrives. 

“Is Morgan - ”

“She can swim,” Tony reassures him. “And FRIDAY’s got an eye on her.”

“Good,” Steve says, relieved. 

“I’m sorry if you wanted to stand in lines with sticky children and sweaty adults for the better part of a day,” Tony says, “but I’m not putting us through that. Not during spring break, when every family in the country is going to be there.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Steve says, in case that’s the issue.

Tony pulls a face and takes a pull of beer. “People take pictures,” he says, so casually that Steve has to look for the slight downwards turn of his mouth to detect his displeasure. “And normally I wouldn’t mind, but she’s my kid. And you're….”

He doesn’t finish, but Steve gets it. He might be unofficially retired and better at going unnoticed than ever, but Tony is still Tony and the two of them together might garner too much attention. 

“You’re a good dad,” Steve says, and Tony looks surprised by it. “Morgan’s a good kid.”

“Thanks,” Tony says, blinking, after a few long seconds. 

“And you’re already teaching her money management,” Steve says seriously, knocking Tony’s bottle with his. “Very important stuff at that age.”

Tony scowls, looking just like Morgan when he does. He jabs his elbow into Steve’s side before turning away, calling for Morgan to get out of the pool before she turns into a prune. 

*

Steve sleeps in a guest bedroom with white sheets, and the next morning over enormous bowls of sugary cereal, he asks Morgan how she feels about an art project. He can tell she's not entirely sold on his presence yet, but he’s willing to put in some legwork. She wouldn’t be Tony’s kid if it were easy, he thinks. 

“Tie-dye,” he explains, looking it up on his phone to show her. “Your dad told me you like coloring on things, so this is another way to do it.”

She nearly misses her mouth with her spoon, leaning in to watch the tutorial. 

“I can do any color I want?” she asks, looking at him.

“Any color we can find,” he promises, and Tony groans as he leans against the counter with his third cup of coffee. 

*

They tie-dye. Morgan’s sheets come out aquamarine and tangerine, and Tony shudders at the combination, but she delights in it. They throw in a few white shirts for good measure, with Tony forcing Steve to make him one that’s vibrant red and sunny yellow, and Morgan forces Steve to do a red and royal blue one.

“So you _do_ know who I am,” he deadpans, and she pushes at his arm and whines until he does one yellow and orange for her. 

Steve gets in the pool with her, swimming laps until she clings to his back, all high-pitched squeals and giggles in his ear as he drags her around. Tony watches from a lounger, working away on a tablet even as Morgan splashes him. 

“See, Steve knows better,” Tony says, pointing at them warningly. 

“I just know better than to mess with the hair,” Steve says, and Tony pouts exaggeratedly until Morgan announces she’s hungry and they agree to get dressed and pick up dinner at a hole-in-the-wall sandwich place. 

They spend a couple of days like that, lazy and dragging on in the best way. Steve helps Morgan drop blueberries into pancakes, letting her sit on the counter even as Tony gripes about how she should be standing on a stool instead. The three of them are content to drift in time, but then Morgan gets restless and whines about Disneyland. 

“She’s not even tall enough,” Tony says, scrubbing a hand over his face after she leaves the room, slamming her bedroom door above them. “I’m not building the kid stilts so she can fly out of a harness and die, all in the name of the world’s weakest adrenaline rush.”

Steve watches Tony on the other end of the couch as a paused movie is forgotten. 

“I could drop her at Pepper’s,” Tony says. “Or we could go to the beach.”

“The beach would be nice,” Steve says placidly, and Tony looks at him. 

“Hey,” Tony says, all sudden. “You’ve been in town for like, seventy-two hours, and we haven’t yelled at each other once.”

“You yelled at me when I paid for dinner last night,” Steve reminds him. 

“Only because you’re my guest here, and the sushi was supposed to be my treat,” Tony says. 

“I still can’t believe your five-year-old likes sushi.”

“She’s got sophisticated taste,” Tony says with a grin and a shrug. “Sheet color combinations notwithstanding.”

Steve grins back. They unpause the movie, and eventually the noise lures Morgan back downstairs. When the credits start to roll, she slouches in the cushions and kicks at the coffee table. 

“I’m bored,” she announces.

“Hi bored, I’m Tony,” Tony says, tickling her side before pulling her into his lap. She goes easily, cradled against him in no time. “Want to go to the beach?”

*

They gather supplies and Tony says he knows a place. It’s further up the coast, and Morgan falls asleep in the car, adorable with her mouth open and head bent at an unnatural angle. Steve has to resist the urge to wake her up, Tony shooting him a glance and shaking his head warningly. 

“She’ll be grumpy if you do,” he advises. 

She perks up once they arrive, and it’s true that on a Tuesday afternoon the beach is mostly empty. There are a few surfers and a particularly handsy couple that Tony snorts at as he watches Steve set up towels and chairs and an umbrella. He wants to ask why Tony’s got all this stuff on hand, but then Steve watches Tony slide a pair of water wings on Morgan’s upper arms and he doesn’t need to. 

It’s the definition of picturesque, and Steve carefully snaps shots of the scenery and sends them off to Beth and Josie, knowing that the latter will show everyone at the house. 

Beth texts back almost immediately: _Jealous. Callie wants to see Tony._

So Steve angles the phone to capture where Tony is pacing the shore, leaving behind footprints that are effortlessly washed away by the tender caress of the waves. He’s on his own phone, talking about something probably business or compound related, and after telling Beth that that’s all she’s going to get, Steve stretches out on his towel and relishes the way the sun beats into his skin. Morgan splashes around until she tears herself out of the water, pulling at Tony’s shirt with dripping hands, but Tony just shakes his head and points up at Steve. 

Morgan crashes into him, all briny-wet and smiling with her adorable baby teeth. He’s somehow earned her childlike trust, and he smiles back and enjoys the way the water cools his heated skin. 

“Come swim with me,” she says, placing her hands on the sides of his face. He really needs to trim his beard. “Daddy’s too busy.”

Steve knows that Tony doesn’t like getting in the water, so he lets Morgan wrap herself around him and he swims out as far as he can without disappearing from Tony’s sight. Morgan loves it, plastered to his back so she can breathe as he keeps his head underwater. When he finally emerges and shakes his hair at her, she cries out in delight. He treads water for a while as Morgan twists Steve’s hair between her little fingers and tells him he needs a headband.

“Or hair clips,” she says thoughtfully. “I have these really cool ones with blue bows on them. Mommy says that way, she doesn’t have to fight me to stay still. Can we do makeovers tomorrow?”

Steve laughs and tells her yes, then to hold on. He pumps his arms back to Tony as fast as he can, Morgan screaming the entire time. 

“Not as good as Disney,” she tells Tony, who rolls his eyes until all they can see are the whites. 

*

The sun sets violet and indigo and buttercup yellow-orange as they drive back to the house, and Steve just about presses his face to the window to watch. He took plenty of pictures before they got in the car, after they found a parking lot with food trucks and Morgan gorged herself on chili cheese fries. 

“Thanks for swimming with her,” Tony says. Morgan’s in the back, playing on a tablet and verging on cranky as her bedtime approaches. 

“It’s nothing,” Steve shrugs. 

Tony’s driving with his left hand, right elbow propped on the center console while his hand rubs at his mouth. 

“You glad you came?” Tony asks. “I hope we haven’t been too boring for you.”

“I think the only one here getting bored is Morgan,” Steve says, and Tony smiles behind his hand. “Really though, it’s been nice. Feels like what everyone says a vacation is supposed to be.”

Tony’s arm shifts, elbow unhinging until fingers are running over the inside of Steve’s forearm. It’s brief, just a silent acknowledgment, but it sends shivers down Steve’s spine. He tells himself that it’s from the air conditioning and his damp hair. 

He’s gotten very good at lying to himself lately. 

“I want my song again,” Morgan whines, tossing the tablet on the seat next to her. She kicks at the back of Steve’s seat. 

“Do you want to try again?” Tony asks, all body parts back on his side of the car as he glances at Morgan in the rearview mirror.

Morgan sighs, frustrated and exhausted from the sunshine. “Please?”

Tony flips on the soundtrack, and Steve is beginning to recognize the melodies. When they’re almost to the house, he props his own elbow on the console and aligns his arm with Tony’s, the backs of their hands loosely pressed together. 

“Thank you,” he says, heavy with emphasis, hoping that Tony understands. 

From the way Tony looks over, he thinks he does. 

*

They do makeovers, and Steve’s toes end up holographic cerulean. Morgan’s hands aren’t the steadiest and Tony refuses to get close to her kiddie nail polish collection, but he does let her brush his hair and slide a gold tiara on his head. Steve paints her tiny fingernails alternating mermaid green and neon yellow, and Tony begs Steve to teach her color theory. 

Steve uncovers a grill and sends Tony and Morgan to the store while he goes on a run, and when they come back he mops his sweaty face with his shirt and cooks burgers for them. There’s corn on the cob and Morgan voices her concern that barbecues are for summer only, but Tony puts her in yet another bathing suit and she loses herself spinning in an inner tube, singing at the top of her lungs as FRIDAY plays her favorite songs. 

“If your chest hair catches fire, I’m not putting it out.”

Steve glances down. 

“I got sweaty. Didn’t see the point in showering when I’ll just get in the water with her after we eat,” Steve points out. 

“You’re not shirtless this often around your own kids, are you?”

Steve can’t help the way his mouth quirks into a smile. “Is it bothering you?”

Tony looks away immediately and posts up in his lounger with his tablet until the food is ready. 

*

Pepper comes by the next morning to pick Morgan up for a dentist appointment, and Steve pretends he isn’t eavesdropping as he helps Morgan lace up her sneakers. 

“I could’ve taken her,” Tony sulks. 

Pepper’s response is barely audible. “You’ve got a guest, Tony.”

“It’s just Steve,” Tony stresses, and Pepper lets out an ambiguous laugh. 

“It’s never _just_ Steve,” she says, and Steve feels his shoulders cave in at her tone. They’ve never been close but he still can’t get a read on how she feels about his presence, and the last thing he wants is to make her uncomfortable. 

“It is,” Tony says insistently. “If anything, he’s a third wheel to me and Morgan, and - ”

“I don’t care,” Pepper says. “Should I keep her for the night?”

Steve’s ears burn red-hot as Tony splutters, babbling and telling Pepper she’s insane, and Steve pats Morgan’s legs as he stands. 

“You’re ready to go,” he tells her, and she imitates him by patting his thighs before skipping off to meet her mother. 

“You can bring her back for dinner,” Tony says, and Steve collapses onto the couch. By the time his embarrassment has ebbed, Tony’s doing the same, a safe distance away. “Tell me you and your super-soldier hearing missed that entire conversation.”

Steve knows his lack of a response gives him away, and Tony sighs. 

“She always forgets.”

“She’s got no reason to remember,” Steve says, forcing himself not to hide. 

“She’s also got no reason to make ridiculous assumptions,” Tony scoffs and Steve runs his hands down his thighs. 

“Did you have any plans?” Steve asks, because Tony had mentioned a day together without Morgan, but when faced with the actuality of it, it doesn’t seem as simple as it had. “Because I can entertain myself for a bit.”

Tony looks guilty. “I do have some things I’m supposed to be working on.”

Steve reassures him that it’s okay, and he doesn’t mind going for a run, and the kids want souvenirs so he might head to a tacky shop on a pier. Tony tells him to take his pick of the car keys, and it feels a little like avoidance, but mostly it just feels like they don’t know what to do with each other. 

Chickening out is better than yelling. 

*

Sam laughs into the phone, and Steve winces at how loud it is through the car’s speakers. 

“Man, I could’ve told you that,” he says, and Steve has to resist the urge to grip the wheel with all he’s got. “Bucky, tell him. Tell him it’s not a coincidence that they officially split and then suddenly Tony’s all over him.”

Steve frowns.

Bucky doesn’t love talking on the phone, has been mostly solemn and reserved in this new century, but he does take the phone from Sam, and Steve is grateful. 

“Sam likes to talk,” Bucky says, and Steve agrees. “Don’t let him get in your head.”

“We’re just trying to get along,” Steve says, but suddenly it feels suspect. “Morgan’s been with us the entire time.”

“You know the situation better than we do,” Bucky says, but then Sam’s got the phone again and Steve is wincing at the volume. 

“You should hear him when he’s here,” Sam tells him. “How do you think I found you in the first place? Asking if we’ve heard from you, real casual about it. Keeps threatening to take those photos off the picture wall. I think he’s planning on hanging them in his room, if he ever gets his head out of his ass about it.”

“We can barely spend time together without hating each other,” Steve says, thinking of Tony’s visit to Houston. “Don’t you think that’s kind of a jump?”

Now Bucky’s back on the line, humming thoughtfully. “You know what they say about fine lines.”

*

Pepper drops Morgan off in time for dinner, and Steve relaxes. 

*

He’s thought about it, deep in the recesses of his mind, on and off for so long. It’s never seemed like an option, and he thinks that it probably still isn’t, and Sam is just a terrible gossip. 

Morgan serves as an excellent distraction. She demands near-constant entertainment, and Steve is more than happy to provide it to her. He builds a blanket fort and tells Morgan age-appropriate scary stories that make her laugh until her stomach hurts. Tony makes pina coladas, adds rum to his and Steve’s, and Steve secretly loves the way Tony’s tongue loosens until he’s singing along to a Top Hits playlist that he claims he has nothing to do with. Various scrunchies make their way into Steve’s hair, and when he teaches Morgan how to flip a pancake, a velvet red one ties it all up in some semblance of a messy bun. 

“Oh, wow,” Tony says, stopping as he enters the kitchen. “So you’re really embracing the whole caveman look, then.”

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Do you need to go get your clippers?”

Tony waves his hands around as he goes for the coffee machine. “Not at all. I didn’t say I didn’t like it. Personally, I’m just surprised that you decided an activity involving a hot griddle warranted a shirt.”

“Didn’t want to offend you,” Steve teases, “and your delicate sensibilities.”

He swears he sees the tops of Tony’s cheeks twinge barely red, but then Morgan spills pancake batter down her front, and that requires tending to. 

They make it to the beach twice more, and Tony stays on the sand while Steve dog paddles out with Morgan. They buy cheap sunglasses from a pharmacy: Morgan gets pink hearts, Steve gets aviators with orange lenses, and Tony acts like he’s too good for a pair until he snaps up some hideous purple and green things. 

“Just like Bruce,” Tony says, and Steve’s heart stutters before the moment passes and he can laugh along. 

He thinks he misses his old friends. If he can call them that. 

*

Morgan gets dropped off with Pepper on Sunday afternoon, because she’s got school the next day and Steve’s flight leaves in the morning. When it comes time to say goodbye, Morgan won’t let go of Steve’s leg. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells Pepper profusely, trying to be conscious of whatever she’s thinking about him. 

“Will I see you again?” Morgan asks, brown eyes enormous as she looks up at him. 

Steve glances at Tony for help, but Tony just shrugs and leans against the car. 

“We can figure something out,” Steve says, petting her hair. She buries her head in his leg, overly dramatic and ignoring every time Pepper exasperatedly tells her to let go. 

“Steve doesn’t mind,” Morgan says. 

He tries to peel her off and only manages so because of his strength. 

“If you’re good for your mom,” Steve says, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “I’ll work on getting your dad to say yes to Disneyland.”

Morgan looks thrilled. 

“You’re the best,” she says emphatically, throwing her arms around him once more. “I love you _so_ much.”

His first thought is to pray that Pepper knows kids can be easily swayed, and he just spent a week indulging her daughter’s every whim, but then Steve feels like he could burst with the feeling he’s experiencing, so he squeezes Morgan back. 

“I love you, too,” he tells her, soft, and the words come out far more emotional than he means them to. 

The relief he feels when Pepper doesn’t look upset, only amused, saves him from worrying.

They all exchange goodbyes, and the short drive to Tony’s feels weighted. Morgan’s music still plays, and Steve doesn’t know why Tony doesn’t change it but hums along anyway. When they pull up to the house and come to a stop, he’s aware of Tony looking at him. 

“What?” he asks. “Is my hair really that bad?”

Tony shakes his head. “I’ve got steaks thawing for dinner,” he says, jabbing a thumb towards the door. 

So Steve grills and Tony settles into his lounger with his tablet. It’s peaceful and almost fantastical, and they eat outside in the dark with glasses of red wine. Between the two of them, they polish off close to two bottles, and Tony is gloriously red-mouthed as he talks about how Carol is supposed to visit next month, dependent on whether or not the galaxy throws anything new at her. 

Eventually, the conversation dies down and Steve is anxious, similar to how he had felt on the pull-out couch. He needs to decide on a question, and when he’s ready, Tony beats him to it. 

“You were great with Morgan this week,” he says, leaning back in his chair. 

“I’m sorry if I overstepped,” Steve says. “I think I made Pepper uncomfortable.”

“It’s just new for her,” Tony says. “You didn’t overstep. Morgan’s going to be hounding me about you now, though.”

“Is that just a ploy to get me to come by the compound?” Steve asks, and the joke falls flat as he watches Tony swallow slowly, Adam’s apple bobbing. 

Steve can’t look away, and the right question comes to him. 

“Tony,” he asks, determined to know, “did you want me to come here so I could get to know your kid?”

They lock eyes, and Steve feels flushed all over. 

“Do you want me to have asked you here to get to know Morgan?” Tony asks, and Steve can’t look away from his mouth as he talks. 

Everything feels charged, Steve’s ears buzzing as he wars inside, between what he’s wanted and what he knows they’re not ready for. In the end, he licks his lips and looks away, hating the glimpse of disappointment he catches on Tony’s face. 

“I’ve had a really great time,” he confesses, staring out over the ocean. “I - I don’t think I’ve felt like this in a really long time. Or ever, really.”

“Oh, Steve,” Tony says, and it’s not pitying, but it’s empathetic. It fuels something inside of Steve. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says, hit with an unexpected wall of emotion. 

“That’s okay,” Tony says. “None of us do.”

“I didn’t know how to belong after everything,” Steve says, and his hands feel big and clunky, and he doesn’t know what to do with them. “You had Pepper and Morgan, and Rhodes and Happy. And you’d been without everyone else for so long, and after what you did for all of us, I didn’t want to take anything else from you.”

“You wouldn’t have. I’ve learned that nobody is anyone’s, Steve.”

“I miss her,” Steve says, and his eyes are wet. “I miss her so much.”

Tony’s hand slips in his and holds firm. He’s a little shaky, but Steve just holds right back, and that fixes everything. 

“I know,” Tony says, the words almost lost on the breeze. “I know you two were close.”

“I miss everyone,” Steve says, and saying it feels like a weight off his shoulders. “I’m just not ready to go back yet. I’ve got a place that feels like mine, that I helped build into what it is now, and that’s important to me.”

“I know, Steve,” Tony says patiently. “Why d’you think I’ve got them set up through the Foundation?”

Steve looks at Tony, hoping that he can adequately convey how much gratitude he holds towards him. 

“I meant what I said,” Steve says, and he feels desperate for a second, but then he just feels bold. “About everything always being up to you.”

And Tony looks at him, long and scorching. He takes the hand that isn’t holding Steve’s and pushes into Steve’s hair, holding him there and cradling his skull tenderly. 

“And I meant what I said about always needing you,” Tony says finally. “I couldn’t have done any of it without you.”

“I wasn’t even there,” Steve says, and it feels self-flagellating and pathetic, but Tony shakes his head and holds Steve closer. 

“Don’t leave again,” Tony murmurs, and Steve nods, entranced. 

“I won’t,” he vows, meaning it. 

They sit like that for a long while. 

Steve thinks that he knows where he’s supposed to go from here. He thinks he knows what he’s supposed to do.

*

On the drive to the airport, Steve finds them holding hands like they’re each other's lifelines. He’s not sure who moved first, but neither shows any sign of letting go. 

Steve clears his throat. “So. You remember Bonnie?”

Tony chuckles. 

“She’s a little young for me.”

Steve jostles their hands and rolls his eyes. 

“She helped remind me of something,” he says, looking at the road. With every mile the car eats up, it’s less time with Tony, and he’s dreading leaving him. “About how important people are, and how important it is to tell them what they mean to us.”

“Yeah?” Tony asks, interest clearly etched into his profile. 

“Yeah,” Steve nods. “I know I left a lot of people behind. But I think I needed a new perspective. Something to help me remember how much - to help me remember that it’s okay to love the people who mean a lot to me, even after everything we’ve been through.”

He listens, can hear the sharpness of Tony’s breathing. He picks up on the slight uptick in Tony’s pulse, the near insignificant flex of his fingers between Steve’s. 

“I spent a long time finding my worth in the things I was able to do for others,” Steve says. “And when I felt like I didn’t have anything to contribute, I couldn’t stay. But I know now, the kids have made me believe that I am more than Captain America. That I don’t have to stay on active duty in order to matter to the people who matter to me.”

Tony looks almost proud, for lack of a better word. 

“You matter, Steve,” Tony says, and they’re coming up on the airport. “You matter so much, to so many people.”

The words get caught in Steve’s throat, but the look in Tony’s eye makes him think that’s okay. He’ll get another chance. 

When they pull up, Tony puts the car in park and they refuse to untangle their hands. 

“I’m not leaving,” Steve says, surely. 

“I’m holding you to that,” Tony says. 

And Steve wants to kiss him, but not like this. Not yet.

“Come back,” he says, scrambling for words as the seconds seep from between their fingers. “Or - I’ll come back.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Tony says, hope blooming on his face, and it’s lovely. Steve feels all the lovelier for putting it there. “You go back to your family, okay?”

“I miss them,” Steve admits. 

“I know,” Tony says, smiling. 

They hug, awkward but fierce over the middle of the car, and if Steve forgets himself and holds too hard, Tony doesn’t say anything. 

Neither of them says anything, but Steve thinks that they both know. 

He knows. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear I meant to update consistently, but then got slammed by a winter storm and didn't have power for a while. Barring any more natural disasters, I do plan on continuing to post every few days. That being said, thank you to everyone who takes the time to engage with this - all of it is greatly appreciated.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve hands out hugs and gifts like it’s his job - which it kind of is. There are keychains for the older kids, t-shirts in varying bright colors, and he hands Beth a sheet of temporary tattoos with a wry smile. 

“I swear your hair is even longer,” Denise comments. He thinks about the scrunchie Morgan gifted him: blue to match his toenails, she’d said. 

“I missed you all,” he tells them, and dinner is loud as everyone clamors to tell him what exactly he’s missed. Serena lost a tooth, Crystal had a birthday and got a new purse, and Zeke has shot up at least an inch. Beth is weirdly quiet, and Steve finds her on the small back porch as everyone drifts to their rooms for the night. 

“You’ve got school in the morning,” he says, and she just gives him a half-hearted smile as she spins her phone between her palms. “How was Dallas with Callie? You didn’t say anything. Or did you just get it all out of your system before I came home?”

Beth looks like she’s hesitating, like she only does when she’s unsure. It doesn’t take her long to get it together, though. 

“How was seeing Tony?”

He’s thrown by the question. “Good. Spent a lot of time with his kid. Her name is Morgan. She’s five.”

Then he sees the guilty expression on her face, and he wonders if she’s been talking with Bonnie. He nudges her and cocks his head. 

“I talked to Bonnie this morning,” she says.

“Yeah, I’ll be having words with her,” he mutters, and at least Beth cracks a smile at that. 

“She only told me because,” Beth hesitates some more, and Steve wraps an arm around her shoulder to tug her in. “She only told me because Callie tried to kiss me.”

Steve nods, processing that. “Why ‘tried?’”

Beth still plays with her phone. “I kind of panicked,” she says too fast. “I didn’t think - I mean, I missed her, and she was my best friend. But I never thought - ”

He gives her the space she needs for this, and thinks about Tony, and how much he misses him. 

“Bonnie said you told her that there was nothing between you and Tony,” Beth says with a deep breath. “But you just stayed with him, same as me staying with Callie.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. 

“So is it really nothing?” Beth asks, like she needs to know urgently. “Because it was right before I left, and I don’t know what to do. It’s all weird now, but she’s my best friend. You know?”

“Did you like it when she kissed you?”

“I wasn’t ready for it,” Beth defends. “I don’t know.”

“So tell her,” Steve says. “Tell her you don’t know.”

“How does that help?” she demands. 

“Because talking about it is better than not talking about it,” he tells her, and she relents. 

“Did you and Tony talk?”

“I never said there was anything going on with Tony,” Steve says, jostling her goodnaturedly. 

“I’m not blind,” she says plainly, more like herself. “You talk to him more than anyone else. Bonnie said you were cuddling. I’m not going to judge you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m not worried about being judged by you,” Steve says as she shakes him off. 

“Does he like your hair?” Beth asks. 

“What is it with everyone and the hair?” Steve asks in exasperation. 

“Does he?” Beth pushes. 

Steve sighs. “I don’t know.”

“Then ask him,” Beth says, nudging him. 

*

Manny comes to Steve with all the embarrassment of a teenage boy, and Steve hands him some cash and tells him what he knows about buying condoms in the twenty-first century. When he relays the story to Tony later, Tony guffaws loudly until Steve is ready to hang up on him. 

“Captain America giving out sex advice,” Tony wheezes. “That’s something I’d pay to see.”

Steve steadfastly maintains that it wasn’t sex advice before asking Tony if he feels like supporting any potential teenage pregnancies, and that shuts him up real fast. 

“I’m having horrific visions of Morgan’s teen years,” he says with a dramatic, audible shudder. “I’m going to lock her up like Princess Fiona.”

Then Beth talks to Callie and comes to Steve for advice, and he points her in Denise and Josie’s direction. His defense is that he knows nothing about how women operate, and when he gripes about it to Tony, he’s laughed at again. 

Sam calls to insinuate that something scandalous happened in Malibu, and Bucky steals the phone to casually offer to snap Sam’s neck and make it look like an accident. 

“That’s not necessary,” Steve says, trying not to laugh. “Do you guys not have anything else to do up there?”

“We just got back from a mission, thank you very much,” Sam says, offended. “But when the boss man starts churning out upgrades like he’s on speed - ”

Steve spends a lot of time on the phone, and Josie calls him on it. 

“You’re different,” she says, when he comes in after his run one morning, having stayed in the driveway long enough to return a missed call from Wanda. It had been nothing serious; she’d talked to Morgan and wanted to know if it was true that Steve had walked around with painted toenails for the better part of a week. 

“They don’t seem so far away anymore,” he tries to explain, but he doesn’t think he does a very good job. 

Josie somehow seems to understand anyway. 

That night, Steve talks to Tony for longer than usual. He doesn’t want to hang up, and Tony seems to understand, content to either talk nonsense about the training sessions he’s popped in on or let the companionable silence sit as he slaves away in his workshop. 

When Steve finally works up the nerve, it’s to say, “Do I really have a room at the compound?”

They both know that’s not what he’s really asking. 

“Yeah,” Tony says. “You’ve always had a room.”

*

“Are you stealing Steve from us?”

Tony looks down at where Jackson is clutching his stuffed teddy bear. He’s passing through, on his way from the compound to take Morgan back to Pepper. His plan had originally been to swing by afterward, but Pepper’s delayed in Japan and apparently, Morgan misses Steve. 

He kind of doesn’t believe it until Morgan arrives and launches herself at him, hanging off his legs and demanding that they go swimming. 

“No,” Tony says, pushing his sunglasses onto his head. “But I hope this sports team has room for a couple more players.”

Steve avoids Beth and Bonnie’s pointed stares and instead takes the younger kids outside to draw on the sidewalk. Morgan loves the approved opportunity to make a mess on something that isn’t paper, and steals the grassy green chalk while Steve sketches out a four-square box for the boys. Texas is getting hot now, and by the time he’s drawn an elaborate scene of two fairy princesses being rescued by a giant gorilla (Morgan and Serena’s instructions, he swears), he’s just about to break a sweat. 

There’s a cup being handed to him, and Steve accepts the sweet tea as Tony stands next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder. 

“Ben tells me you drew a lot of Iron Man before the house,” Tony says. 

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Back then I guess I was still a novelty. Drew all of us, really. Now they’ve gotten used to me.”

“I don’t think anyone could ever get used to you,” Tony muses, and Steve shares his drink. 

*

They all hang out in the backyard until late, with the fire growing tall and marshmallows on sticks that appeared out of nowhere. Steve suspects Tony, and narrowly avoids stepping on melted marshmallow in the grass. Morgan is loudly telling everyone how to build the perfect s’more, and Steve ducks inside to get napkins in anticipation of sticky fingers. He finds Denise and Josie, conversing lowly, but they shut up as soon as he enters. 

“Talking about me?” he jokes, but they exchange glances and dread swirls in the pit of his stomach. 

“We’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Denise says, walking past him and patting his arm. Josie follows her out to the bonfire, and Steve goes and grabs the entire roll of paper towels. After they’ve been distributed, he sits next to Tony’s who’s talking with Elliot about college and what kind of extracurriculars look good on applications. He means to leave them to it, but then Tony’s hand is resting on the arm of Steve’s chair. 

It looks like an invitation, but all the chairs are awfully close together to begin with. Maybe he’s reading into it, just because having Tony close is always a thrill, and he’s shown up earlier than expected with Morgan in tow, and effortlessly slotted himself into the life Steve’s built for himself.

“Right?” Tony says, knocking his hand against the chair.

“What?” Steve refocuses, but nearly loses it again. Tony looks irresistible in the firelight, all golden-orange and fiery red, grinning in that way only he can. The corners of his eyes crinkle like when he’s truly enjoying himself, and having it directed at him is almost more than Steve can take.

“Just talking about non-traditional career paths,” Tony says with a wink, and Steve nearly chokes on his tongue. 

“0/10,” he tells Elliot after a moment, dragging his eyes away from the sharp edge of Tony’s jaw. He’s just as handsome as he was on the helicarrier. “Would not recommend. Please don’t sign up for any untested government experiments.”

Tony does choke on a graham cracker, and Steve pats him on the back hard enough to earn a glare. 

“I want a piggyback ride,” Morgan complains as the little kids grow tired, stomping her feet. Beth slipped her some lime-flavored gum at some point and now Morgan’s teeth are green around the gums, and Tony is fast losing his patience with her. 

“No,” Tony refuses. “Not if you don’t ask nicely.”

“Tony,” Steve says. “It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“He’s not a jungle gym,” Tony says, still addressing his daughter, and Steve clamps his mouth shut. “Just because he can - ”

“He did it for Christina!” Morgan whines, actually stomping her foot. “And he’s done it for me before!”

“Inside,” Tony instructs, and Morgan yells at him the entire time he guides her inside with a firm bracketing of her tiny shoulders. Steve watches as he goes, staring at the strip of skin exposed by the way Tony’s shirt has ridden up. 

Steve turns back to the kids, hoping none of them have watched Morgan’s meltdown. Beth just sidles up to him, looking far too knowing for someone still two weeks away from her sixteenth birthday. 

“No,” Steve stresses, as she opens her mouth. “ _ No. _ Whatever you’ve got to say, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to hear it.”

“Fine,” Beth says. “But it was really good.”

“Go tell Bonnie,” he tells her, and she leaves to do just that.

The teenagers end up around the fire playing Never Have I Ever, and Steve decides he doesn’t need to hear that, so he supervises the younger boys getting ready for bed. He doesn’t see Tony or Morgan, but just figures they needed some alone time, and he doesn’t worry about it. Lance gives Steve a hard time over brushing his teeth, but eventually they’re all tucked in as the clock ticks closer to midnight. The kids are lucky Tony’s come on a Saturday. 

Steve sets up the pull-out couch before showering the smoke out of his hair, knowing he’ll have to wash everyone’s clothes tomorrow to get rid of the smell. As he turns off the water and wraps a towel around his waist, there’s a knock on the door. 

“In here,” Steve calls out, assuming it’s one of the kids needing the toilet. “Give me a moment.”

“It’s me.”

It’s Tony, and Steve thinks on it for a split second. He’s one wrong twitch away from being completely undressed, and just two words have his heart pounding so hard it might as well jump right out his chest. 

He opens the door anyway, and Tony throws himself in the room before closing the door behind him, flicking the lock and staring at Steve with dilated pupils _.  _

“Tony,” Steve says, thick and wanting, but then logic kicks in. “Morgan?”

“Is fast asleep on the pull-out,” Tony says, and there’s desire in the way he speaks, and Steve almost loses his nerve because of how much he wants this and how much he never thought he’d have it. 

So he braces a hand against Tony’s chest, right where the arc reactor used to live, and looks at him desperately. 

“Tony,” he says again. “I’ve - if you knew - ”

“I think I do know,” Tony says. “I didn’t then, didn’t see how you could, but I know now.”

“It’s been ten years,” Steve says, and he needs Tony to get this. “More than that.”

“I know,” Tony repeats, and Steve wants to know how he knows, but his fingers grip Tony’s shirt like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. 

“I never thought - ”

But that doesn’t feel right, so he tries again. 

“I didn’t want to ruin anything.”

Tony’s desire melts, bleeding all over him, flooding everything between them. 

“I think we’ve ruined everything we could’ve,” Tony confesses. “But we’re still here.”

So Steve leans in and Tony meets him halfway, and it ignites the spark that Steve has spent years trying to extinguish. It explodes and the kiss is a mess, too needy and overdue to be anything other than pure relief as Tony bites at Steve’s mouth like he’s got something to prove. Steve pulls Tony in close, despite knowing that he’s getting his front damp, and then Tony goes luxuriously pliant under him. 

His head swims with pleasure and Tony licks at the seam of his mouth, and then they’re both drowning and it feels too sweet, too much like bliss to resist. Hands run over arms and Steve finds Tony’s hips, finds the small of his back, slips under fabric because he needs to feel something  _ real.  _ Tony gasps into it and fists Steve’s hair, stroking a bicep until Steve is moaning and pushing against him because he wants, he wants everything, and this is something he thought he’d only ever have in his dreams. 

It’s so overwhelming, and he pulls away for giant gulps of swampy air that his body doesn’t need but his mind does. 

“This is it, isn’t it?” Tony says in wonderment, like he’s solved some kind of riddle, like he’s unlocked the secret to whatever problem has been plaguing him. “This is - this is it. This is what’s been wrong.”

“No,” Steve shakes his head, adamant. “I never would have let it get in the way.”

“Yeah, but,” Tony says, and he’s still holding onto Steve, pressing a palm to a pectoral and wearing a marvelous expression. “When you said that how much was always up to me. This was it.”

Steve hangs his head but then Tony’s hand shifts from the back of his head to his chin, and he can’t escape. Not that he wants to. 

“I let it be what you wanted,” Steve says, and it’s hard not to feel pathetic, but Tony is looking at him in a new and amazing way and it bolsters him. 

“You think I knew this was an option?” Tony says, sounding strangled. “Steve, if I’d had any idea…”

“I didn’t think it ever would be,” Steve admits, and Tony looks at him with so much intensity, and they’re kissing again. It’s slower now, dragging tongues and sighing against each other, and Steve’s brain feels like mush. 

Then there’s an abrupt knock against the door and they reluctantly pull apart. 

“In here,” Steve says, sure to keep his voice even. 

“I need to piss!”

It’s Manny, and Steve looks at Tony regretfully. Tony just smiles, running his hands up Steve’s arms and punctuating the motion with a kiss. 

“Just a minute,” Steve calls back. 

“Hurry up!” Manny says, and Steve has to laugh, because if anyone was going to interrupt, at least it’s the oldest kid in the house. 

He gets dressed and Tony uses his toothbrush even though Steve suspects he brought his own, and when they slip out of the small room, Manny isn’t waiting outside. It seems like a small miracle but when they sneak over towards the family room, Manny and Beth and Bonnie are all at the breakfast table grinning like the cats who caught the canaries. 

“Busted,” Beth says confidently. Bonnie looks momentarily betrayed, and Steve tries not to laugh as she looks Tony up and down. 

“I was brushing my teeth,” Tony says, and he’s so convincing that Steve almost believes that’s all they were doing. “Now scram, before you wake up my kid.”

They scatter, and Steve wonders if Manny knocking was a ploy. 

Morgan is spread-eagle in the center of the pull-out, and Steve slides in after Tony convinces him that it’s alright. 

“She’s five,” Tony whispers as Steve turns off the lamp. “It’s not creepy.”

“I know,” Steve says, because he remembers all those nights with Serena, but Morgan isn’t his so it feels wrong to presume without permission. 

He listens to Tony’s breathing, and it lulls him to sleep as it evens out. 

*

When Steve wakes up in the wee hours of the morning, he doesn’t remember why at first. He just sits up and catches his breath until his vision adjusts and he can see where he is. 

He’s safe. Tony’s there, and Morgan’s there, and everyone else is upstairs and Thanos is long gone. 

There are tiny hands on his shirtsleeve, and Steve nearly starts before he feels Morgan smoosh her face against him. 

“Sleep,” she urges him, all bossy in that endearing way he loves. He’s pretty sure he only loves it because he’s not her dad, but he loves it all the same. 

So Steve settles back into his pillow, and Morgan is half asleep but half sprawls over him. She smells familiar, all crayons and Cheerios and baby-soft hair. As Steve drifts off again, he feels another arm stretch out to rest on his stomach, he realizes that he’s so close to having everything he never dared to give himself.

*

Wobbly crimson hearts with arrows through them curl around his left arm, serpentine with mismatched letters and Morgan’s name proudly written in thick black Sharpie. She’s on cloud nine, and when empty space dwindles, she bites an orange highlighter scrounged out of the depths of the kitchen junk drawer and considers where she’s already pushed up his sleeve to get more room. 

“What if,” she says, eyes glinting in the sun, “I did a caterpillar here?”

She jabs the highlighter into his solar plexus, and he nearly wheezes as he gets out, “Yeah, alright.”

So he dumps his shirt in the grass and does his best to hold still as she works, tiny hands splayed out over his front as she wiggles around on his lap and alternates orange highlighter and blue Sharpie circles until she adds a face and antennae. Then she hollers for Hannah, keeper of the art supplies in the house, and demands more colors. 

“I don’t know that gel pens will transfer to skin super well,” Hannah says, rifling through her school pencil case. “But we might have fingerpaints somewhere.”

Steve holds back a groan and just smiles as Morgan’s face lights up, but he’s pretty sure it comes out as a grimace. Morgan disappears inside to retrieve said fingerpaints, holding Hannah’s hand and swinging it between them. Josie comes over and dumps herself on the arm of Steve’s chair, clothes almost entirely soaked through. 

“I don’t know how he does it,” Josie says, shaking her head of tight curls, and Steve doesn’t need her to clarify. The inflatable water-slide-slash-obstacle-course had appeared out of thin air, it felt like, fit into the corner of the backyard before bags upon bags of family-sized chips had landed on the table, accompanied by cans of at least five different types of soda and party rings of sub sandwiches. 

“Apparently Dr. Pepper is a thing here. You’ll eat an Italian combo, won’t you?” Tony had asked, dumping a tray down while Zeke hefted the soda up. 

Steve hadn’t been able to help the way he stared at Tony, hair tousled and eyes squinting while his sunglasses hung from the stretched-out neck of his shirt.

“Yeah,” he’d said, coughing into his fist. “I’d love one.”

Now, Alexa and Ben are fighting over the last chocolate chip cookie and Elliot has violently purple frosting smeared on his glasses, a half-eaten cupcake in hand. 

“Denise is worried,” Josie says, and Steve frowns so she elaborates. “She worries that they’re all going to get attached, and then he’ll be gone. That you’ll be gone.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Steve says emphatically. “And neither is he.”

Josie gestures out at the scene before them, the one that fills Steve up and helps right every out-of-sorts sensation he’s ever had. 

“I don’t think most of them have ever had anything like this in their lives,” she says, and she’s never been one to wear her heart anywhere near her sleeve, but this is the closest he’s ever seen. “He just gives so much, and I don’t know how much we can take. How much we  _ should _ take.”

Steve pats her knee. 

“It took me a long time to figure out that he gives what no one ever bothered to give him,” Steve says, quietly, even though Crystal screaming as Charlie pushes her on the inflatable course is more than enough to drown out their conversation. “He won’t take any of this away. He’s got deposits set up through his mom’s foundation, and they won’t dry up until he’s bankrupt.”

“God,” Josie says, and Steve looks away to give her privacy as she rubs her eyes on her wet shoulder. “If I’d known, a year ago - ”

Steve laughs. “A year ago, we weren’t even on speaking terms,” he says. “I thought he’d hate me forever.”

“A lot can change in a year,” Josie says, and she pats his arm before getting up.

He thinks of that fine line Bucky had talked about, and then Morgan reappears with a collection of pastel fingerpaints. 

“They’re kind of boring,” she says, flashing them in front of his face, and he has to duck to avoid a scratch to the cornea. “But they’ll do.”

Morgan dips her fingers in and swirls them over Steve’s front while directing Hannah to do his right arm. The paint is cool against his skin and it almost feels nice in the sweltering sun, and when he attempts to pause their tattooing session so he can grab a peanut butter cookie, Morgan feeds it to him and he’s rather glad that kid paints are non-toxic these days. That, and he's highly unlikely to get sick anyway. 

Tony comes over just as Morgan is tapping her chin with a brown-smudged finger, every color blending into something truly atrocious at this point, and sneaks a hand into Steve’s pocket. 

“What’re you - ”

“Blackmail,” Tony grins, retrieving Steve’s phone. His hair is soaked and plastered to his forehead because even though he doesn’t like getting in water, he’s been participating in the obstacle course shenanigans with all the enthusiasm of someone forty years younger. It’s a good look on him, and before he can take a picture, Morgan holds up her hands. 

“Wait!” she exclaims, and Tony lowers the phone. “His hair. Daddy, put it up. It’s gonna get paint in it.”

Tony bursts into laughter as Steve grumbles. 

“It’s not  _ that  _ long.”

So Tony gently peels the scrunchie off Morgan’s wrist (rainbow-colored and shiny this time), careful not to get any paint on it, and moves behind Steve who instinctively tilts his head back to look at him.

“Hi,” he grins.

“Hi,” Tony returns, his grin just as wide. “You know she’s going to start asking other people to let her draw on them, right?”

“Nah,” Steve says, and Tony’s hands feel impossibly good as they weave through his hair, combing it all back together. “She knows that this is just between us. Right, Morgan?”

Morgan is too busy critiquing Hannah’s rendering of a bluebird. “Its beak should be blue! Not yellow. They call it a  _ blue _ bird.”

Tony ties Steve’s hair into a water fountain of a ponytail. “Reminds me of Morgan’s hair when she was an infant,” Tony teases, and Steve loves the crinkles by his eyes. He reaches up to feel the handiwork, fingers closing over Tony’s wrist as he adjusts the scrunchie. 

“Thank you,” Steve says, and he wants to kiss Tony. Tony looks like he wants to be kissed, pulse ratcheting up under the press of Steve’s fingertips, but just grazes his own over the back of Steve’s hand before holding up the phone again. 

“Let’s try this again,” Tony says, loud and attention-grabbing. “Smile! Say cheese!”

Steve balances Morgan on his lap and calls out cheese, and as soon as Tony’s decided he has enough pictures, he gets out of the chair. 

“Time to wash this off,” he says, motioning to himself and then to the water slide. 

“You need soap,” Hannah says, wiping her messy hands on her thighs. “Hold on - I have an idea.”

And that’s how they end up pouring dish soap over the inflatable, and there’s dirty soapy water everywhere and everyone is covered in white bubbles and Steve slides down with Christina in his lap, and then Beth pushes him down, and then he races Tony and it’s not clear who wins because there’s too much foul play for any result to be legitimate. 

He laughs so hard his stomach hurts, inhales so much soap his nostrils burn, and feels so full of love he wants to scream it into the galaxy. 

He wants to be here. He wants to be doing this.

*

They take a walk. The corner house has lined their lot with gardenia bushes, overgrown and perfuming the spring air, and Steve feels a little silly when he stops to close his eyes and commit it to memory. Tony just stops with him, and when Steve opens his eyes, he sees that Tony’s have been closed too. 

He thinks of a movie the kids had watched around Christmastime, with a weird green furry creature with a funny name, and his own heart grows several sizes in that instant. 

He takes Tony’s hand, tentatively, and when Tony doesn’t pull away, he holds tight. 

“You’ve been really great to them,” Steve says. Predictably, Tony brushes it off. “I mean it.”

Everyone back at the house is camped out in the family room, a movie playing but ignored in favor of boxes of pizza and a poker game, in the case of the older kids, and Pictionary, in the case of the younger ones. 

Steve hasn’t quite been able to get rid of the Sharpie on his skin, but he kind of likes the way Morgan’s branded him as one of hers.  Tony seems to like it too, judging by the way he rubs a thumb over the crooked lettering. 

“Always trying to outdo me, huh? I go and get myself one kid, you just had to go and get yourself - how many are there? I keep trying to count but lose track.”

“Fourteen,” Steve said. 

“They must like you,” Tony comments as they walk. “If they’re all here, and not hanging out with friends.”

“I think that’s more because you’re here,” Steve says, modest. “But yeah. They seem to think I’m alright.”

“Don’t know where they got that idea.”

“Do we need to talk?” Steve asks, thinking of the words of wisdom he’d imparted on Beth a few weeks prior. “I want to make sure we don’t end up yelling again.”

“We can talk,” Tony says. He must sense that Steve struggles to start, so he takes charge. “Did you really leave because you thought no one needed you?”

Steve shrugs, which is an admission in its own right. 

“I left you a phone,” he says, ignoring the prickling of his eyelids. “And the first thing I made Carol do was go find you, but you couldn’t even look at me.”

“Steve,” Tony says, and they’re stopping now, facing each other while Tony’s hand shifts to grab Steve’s elbow. “Listen to me. I was angry and traumatized.”

“You weren’t wrong,” Steve says, and the sudden swing from possibly the best day of his life to discussing the lowest of the low with the person he’d dragged down with him almost makes him nauseous. “We were supposed to do it together.”

“And we did,” Tony says, gripping firmly. “Eventually we got our shit together and brought the world back from the brink together.”

“Too late,” Steve says, blinking to keep from crying. “We lost Nat, and almost lost you. Jesus, Tony, if we’d lost you - ”

He can’t, shoving down a sob and staring at the ground until it all goes blurry. 

“But you didn’t,” Tony says. “I’m still here.”

“You’re only here because of Strange,” Steve says, feeling miserable. “Strange and Dr. Cho, and for a while there it was touch and go.”

“Yeah, but I’m here,” Tony stresses, squeezing Steve’s hand with the one that Helen had grown out of seemingly thin air, and Steve has to look up now, stare at the sky to keep tears from falling. “I thought we’d - this is what I tried to say before. I thought we’d patched things up. Between all the planning and Lehigh and the shield - ”

“I don’t give a damn about the shield,” Steve says fiercely, looking Tony right in the eyes because he means this more than anything. “It’s nothing compared to - ”

And he can’t say it, but Tony’s face softens and so does his hold. 

“And maybe we had patched things up,” Steve continues. “Maybe I was just being a fool, and you’re right and I always leave when I can’t see a way to be the hero.”

“Hey, no,” Tony says. “We’ve both said a lot of things we didn’t mean at the time.”

“After I put the stones back, I couldn’t see anywhere I would be useful. There were no more battles to fight, no more wars to win, and I was lost.”

“And you thought I didn’t care,” Tony says, looking troubled by the notion. 

“Why would you?” Steve says, shoulders dropping. “I almost got you killed.”

Tony’s eyes narrow. “Don’t you dare pull some ‘it should’ve been me’ shit, Rogers.”

Steve can only darkly chuckle at that. “Alright then, I won’t.”

“Because I knew what I was doing,” Tony says. “I knew the risks. You think I didn’t know? I knew it might be the end, and I was okay with that. If anything, I had a nasty time of it waking up. Went down thinking that was it, and then I woke up and thought maybe heaven was real after all.”

It hurts to hear, but Steve forces himself to listen as they move their feet again, making their way around the block. 

“You think I didn’t need you?” Tony scoffs. “Hell, I needed you more than anyone. I thought for sure you’d be around to kick my ass into gear. Thought you’d stick around just to give me grief, in that wronged puppy dog way of yours where you make people feel so bad about disappointing you that they give in to whatever you ask of them.”

“I don’t do that,” Steve denies, then amends the statement at Tony’s look. “Anymore.” 

“No, you just sit around and look so pathetic that I’ve got to hound you with my company until it’s put you out of your misery.”

Steve almost smiles at that. 

“I didn’t realize how much I’d counted on you to be there till you weren’t,” Tony says, and it comes off indifferent but there’s still a great significance to it that Steve can only identify because he’s had so much practice. He’s studied Tony for as long as he’s known him, and paid so much attention that he can tell when he’s not yet ready to admit how much something means to him. 

“I didn’t know,” Steve says, even though that’s been obvious for months. 

“Kind of threw myself into the compound rebuild until Pepper decided she had enough,” Tony says, in the same way. 

“Tony….”

“She alluded to the fact that it happened every time you left,” Tony says, and Steve has an urge to stop and gather Tony in his arms, but just lets him put it all out there. “Not so much as alluded to, as she drew correlations. And she was kind of on to something. Pointed out all the reckless stuff I’d do.”

“You’ve always been a little reckless,” Steve says. 

“Yeah,” Tony says, and his funny little half-smile reminds Steve of standing on the platform together, ready to journey back to 2012 and do whatever it took to restore order to their precious universe. “She’s never liked that part of my personality all that much.”

Steve knows this and would never say it aloud because he respects the people in Tony's life, but he knows that Pepper has always struggled with the risks Tony takes. He’s got a strong suspicion that she’s never quite forgiven Steve for the role he’s played over the years, drawing Tony in time and time again, asking for and needing his help. He always rationalized it, told himself that Tony’s a grown man who can do whatever he wants, but for the first time he wonders if there’s some causation to go along with those correlations. 

“She liked settling down, stability.” Tony keeps going, and Steve lets him. “And I was angry at the world, angry enough to want that too. But anger goes away.”

“It’s exhausting,” Steve says, because he’s always been quick to anger, but he knows how it drains a person. It’s why it never sticks, why he’s never been able to fight with Tony for any longer than it takes to leave and lick his self-inflicted wounds in peace. 

“Yeah,” Tony agrees. “And when I stopped being angry, we decided to have Morgan and all I cared about was keeping them happy and safe. I’d given it all up for Pepper before, and I was more than ready to do it again.”

“You did, keep them happy and safe,” Steve affirms, and he thinks Tony needs to hear it as he looks over. 

“Then why’d I fold like a bad hand when you came calling?”

Steve feels shy, and shrugs. “It wasn’t just me.”

Tony shakes his head. “I’d seen Nat during that time. And don’t act like Scott Lang had anything to do with it.”

Steve can’t see it, can’t reconcile the narrative Tony is stringing together with the reality he’s lived. 

“You didn’t - you loved Pepper. You can’t tell me I had anything to do with any of it.”

“Steve,” Tony says, and their hands are suddenly twined together again. “I can’t tell you that we’re here right now because I  _ didn’t _ spend years successfully running away from the thing that scared me the most.”

Steve knows they’re there together, knows that this didn’t pop up out of nowhere. He knows that for him, it’s been a long time coming. Whether or not he can wrap his head around what Tony’s telling him remains to be seen - he currently feels like his mind is being blown - but he walks them forward and refuses to let go. 

They lap the block so many times that Steve almost loses count. He almost asks Tony if he wants to walk to the diner for an ice cream sundae, but then Tony mentions that he needs to put Morgan to bed if she’s not going to be cranky for Pepper tomorrow. 

“I could always come back after I drop her off,” Tony says, offhand, while they get ready for bed, taking turns in front of the sink. “Or you could come with us. I could pick you up and take you to the compound. I’m a little worried about Barnes’ shrine - he’s added candles.”

Steve knows that the candles are scented and scattered throughout the compound, and not at all part of the picture wall. 

“Not yet,” Steve says, and he hates how Tony’s face falls before fixing itself. “But I want to.”

“That’s fine,” Tony says. “No pressure. Whenever you’re ready, even if that’s never.”

“I’m working on it,” Steve says, and he means it. 

*

Steve drops them at a private airfield after he takes the youngest kids to school, and Morgan pouts at being forced to say goodbye to all her new friends. 

“Manny can carry me on his shoulders,” she complains. “And Beth forgot to give me some of her gum. She said it’s pineapple!”

“Listen, missy,” Tony tells her. “You’re lucky you’re getting out of school today because your mommy got stuck on another continent because of bad weather. Don’t push it.”

Morgan heaves the world’s most enormous sigh, and Steve crouches down to extend a pinky to her. 

“Promise I’ll carry you on my shoulders when I see you again,” he says, and she looks at him dubiously before holding out her own pinky. 

“Soon,” she says, looking at her dad for confirmation. 

“That’s up to him, kiddo.”

“Soon,” Steve confirms, and Morgan hugs him tight. 

When Steve straightens, Tony claps a hand over Morgan’s eyes and looks at Steve in a way that should be illegal in front of a five-year-old on a Monday morning. 

“Daddy!” she groans.

“Daddy needs a grown-up moment,” he says, and she tries and fails to pry his hand away, making Steve think that she’s enjoying their nonsense more than anything. 

Then Tony’s kissing him, and Morgan is still between them so it’s short and simple, but it makes Steve light-headed nevertheless. He places a hand on Tony’s jaw, neck bowed to bridge the distance, which Morgan definitely isn’t helping with, and he loves how Tony’s free hand grips his waist for balance. 

It’s barely five seconds, if that, but it leaves Steve grinning like a madman until his face hurts. Tony doesn’t look any better off, and Morgan just wrinkles her nose and hoists her sparkly backpack further up on her shoulders. 

“I’m not a baby,” she tells them. “Not anymore. You don’t need to have grown-up moments without me.”

“Trust me,” Tony says. “If I have my way, there will be many grown-up moments without you.”

To wipe the scowl off Morgan’s face, Steve sweeps her off her feet in a fireman’s carry for the short walk onto the plane. She cries out as he walks, smacking her feet against his ribcage, and he gently dumps her in a seat once onboard. While she runs off, talking nonsense about apple juice and snacks, Tony steals another kiss and Steve surrenders easily. It’s just as short, but Steve savors it with everything he’s got and reluctantly pulls away when he feels Tony’s hand begin to slide closer to his waistband. 

“Like I told Morgan,” he says, backing down the stairs. “Soon.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Tony says, hanging out the door. They wave, and Steve walks backwards to the car. Tony blows a kiss that Steve catches and holds over his heart, and from a distance, he’d swear that Tony blushes. 

It’s a sight he’s never seen before, and he resolves to do anything he can to see it again as many times as possible. 

*

Steve has to sit down with Beth and admit defeat, and it’s pretty much the worst thing ever. She crows in delight, punching the air before offering him a stick of sour cherry gum. They see who can blow the biggest bubbles, and when Steve wins, Beth accuses him of cheating. 

“I know you’ve got some enhanced lung capacity or something,” she says. “I don’t know why anyone ever tries with you. Does Tony know you’re a cheat?”

“Tony cheats in his own way,” Steve says dismissively. 

“No wonder you two get along so well,” she says, unwrapping another piece while Steve snorts. “Have you asked him about your hair yet?”

He rolls his eyes, and she offers to take him shopping for hair accessories. 

“Morgan’s done decent so far, but I feel like there’s a lot more we can do,” she says, dodging his playful shove. “Bonnie’s getting real good at French braids, and I saw something on Instagram about hair glitter.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” he tells her, and she just blows an enormous bubble right in his face. 

*

Christina learns how to ride a bike, and Serena is insanely jealous until Steve teaches her as well. Manny convinces Denise to let him get an ear pierced, and Steve stifles his laughter when he sees the tiny silver hoop. Sam calls, and Steve is forced to admit his sins because for once, not even Bucky is on his side. 

“Morgan spilled the beans,” Sam says as if that explains anything, which it doesn’t. 

“I didn’t know you two were penpals,” Steve says as he pushes a cart through Target, shaking his head when Crystal tries to put a tube of mascara in the cart without him noticing. He lets Alexa add a multipack of nail polishes with confetti suspended in the lacquer, and she thanks him before skipping down the next aisle. 

“She likes Wanda, I keep telling you, man,” Sam says. “Keep up. Told her that you two looked awfully cozy last weekend.”

“Somehow, I feel like that’s not what she said,” Steve says dryly. 

Crystal holds up a tinted lip balm, and Steve shoots her a thumbs up. 

“He’s happy for you two,” Bucky says. “He just doesn’t know how to say that.”

Steve knows that that means Bucky doesn’t know how to say that either, and he misses his best friends. 

“Thanks, Buck,” he says. 

“No problem,” Bucky says, and then Sam is back and as loud as ever. 

“Does this mean you might actually visit sometime this century?”

Somehow, a six-pack of barrettes ends up tossed in the cart. When Steve stares at them, he almost wants to laugh. They’re glittery and range in color from mint to gold, and he wants to put them back but can admit that his hair situation is getting more than a little out of control. When he’s not pulling it back with either one of Morgan’s scrunchies or Bonnie’s standard black elastics, it hangs nearly as long as Bucky’s had when they’d first reunited in this century. 

“Okay,” Steve says, resting his elbows on the cart and taking the phone away from his ear for a second. “Did Beth put you up to this?” 

“No,” Crystal and Alexa say innocently. 

Ben and Charlie appear at his elbow, apparently tired of pretending to be interested in toiletries. 

“Can we go look at the video games?” Charlie asks, and Steve thinks about the chances of a couple of preteens getting lost in the store.

“I’m not buying any today,” Steve warns. “But if you want to pick out something for your birthday next month, that’s fine.”

“Yes!” Ben exclaims, and then they’re gone. 

Steve puts the phone back up to his face. 

“I’ve got to go,” he says. “Denise sent me out with a whole list, and at this rate, I’ll never get out.”

“You’re so totally a dad,” Sam snickers. 

“Not a dad,” Steve says, although his reasons for saying it couldn’t be more different than they were months ago. He’s no longer scared of admitting that these kids mean everything to him, but he is terrified of something else. 

“We do team breakfast every Sunday,” Bucky says. “Tony says you make a mean blueberry pancake. We wouldn’t mind if you made some for us.”

“Not you too,” Steve groans, and Bucky blows out air through his nose in his own semblance of a laugh. 

“We’ve got a pool going,” Bucky says, voice dropping, and Steve can hear Sam in the background, demanding to know what he’s whispering about. “If you hold out till Memorial Day, I don’t lose fifty bucks.”

“Noted,” Steve says, and he hangs up to devote his full attention to the girls in front of him. “So. Who wants to help me pick out the best smelling fabric softener in this joint?”

Alexa sticks her hand straight up in the air, dancing on her tiptoes. “Me! Me! I want to!”

Steve thinks that of all the places he could be, and of all the things he could do, this certainly doesn’t feel too shabby. 

*

“Bucky wants me to hold out till Memorial Day,” Steve says, folding laundry in the front living room. 

“Tell Barnes I’ll give him the entire pot doubled if he convinces you to come sooner,” Tony says through the phone speaker, and Steve laughs despite the clearly impatient tone. 

“I don’t know,” he muses. “Memorial Day sounds nice. I could grill. Hot dogs, watermelon, that sort of thing.”

“I’m supposed to be working out the bugs in Sam’s new wings before he leaves tonight,” Tony says, sounding strangled. “I don’t have time to think about you grilling and eating hot dogs.”

“Wait,” Steve says, pausing with a pair of Jackson’s shorts in hand. “So you  _ don’t  _ like it when I take my shirt off and cook for you?”

Tony makes a noise that reminds Steve of dinosaurs from those movies Clint forced him to watch way back when, and his grin grows exponentially as he continues folding. 

“You can grill anytime you want,” Tony says. “I’ll have a whole setup installed. We’ll get an outdoor kitchen here, a pool. You want a hot tub?”

“Not without you in it,” Steve says without thinking, but before he can backtrack, Tony is clearing his throat. 

“Let me see what I can do,” he says, sounding seriously interested, and Steve’s whole body stands at attention. 

Before that thought can stick, Manny is poking his head in from the foyer. 

“Most of the kids might not understand what you guys mean by ‘hot dogs,’ but those of us who do….”

Manny trails off and Tony is roaring laughing through the phone, and Steve blushes. 

“Yeah, okay,” he says, fumbling for the phone to take it off speaker. 

“You guys are gross,” Bonnie says, popping in too. 

“Aren’t you the one with the crush on his guy? You should be eavesdropping all over this shit,” Manny says, wiggling his eyebrows, and Bonnie smacks him until he surrenders and heads back to homework central. Steve just lifts an eyebrow at her, and she makes a face. 

“Ew,” she stresses. “You’re like, my  _ dad, _ basically. Anyway. Denise wants to talk to you.”

“Tell her I’ll be there in a minute,” Steve says, motioning to the laundry. “I’m almost done.”

When he’s left alone with his phone, Tony is still laughing to himself. Steve can picture him in his workshop, elbow-deep in circuitry and carbon-fiber, and it warms his heart. 

“I’ve got to go,” Steve says, wedging the phone between his shoulder and ear. “I think I’m in trouble.”

“Oh no,” Tony mocks. “Did mom catch you saying inappropriate things to other boys?”

“Keep it up, and I’ll make you wait even longer than Memorial Day,” Steve warns. 

“Okay, no,” Tony says in the same no-nonsense tone he uses for business negotiations. “That’s already a month away. No way am I - ”

“I’ll call you,” Steve interrupts, because if he doesn’t, he knows they could talk the day away. “We’ll talk about it more. Okay?”

“Okay,” Tony says, and Steve knows neither of them likes hanging up, but they’re adults and do it anyway. 

Denise is in the backyard and Steve accepts the beer she passes him. It’s not even five and he’s reminded of one of their first nights in the house, when Josie had asked how long he was planning to stay. Back then there hadn’t been an answer because he didn’t think he had anywhere else to go. 

Now, when Denise asks, Steve doesn’t have an answer because he doesn’t want to go. 

He rubs a hand over blue denim and looks off into the distance. 

“It’s okay, Steve,” Denise says, and she’s gentler than he’s ever seen her. “You know, Josie and I spent years just trying to survive. There wasn’t time for anything else. Hell, there wasn’t energy for anything besides making sure the money didn’t run out. Our days were so busy with working odd jobs and trying to make sure the city didn’t come and shut us down and put all those kids in worse places.”

The only reason Denise managed to get all the kids together and keep them is because things had been such a mess after the Blip, he knows that. Enforcing laws had been near impossible, and by the time things leveled out and everyone was finding a new normal, people had probably just been glad that someone was feeding the lost children and giving them a place to sleep. They’ve done everything to get everyone back where they belong, and Steve knows that Josie’s been spending long hours with a mentor trying to make sure that Jackson gets to stay with them no matter how sober his mother says she plans on getting. 

It’s been a long road, and not for the first time, there’s a monstrous pit of guilt in his stomach over showing up at the last minute and pretending to be a savior. 

And now he feels himself being pulled in different directions, and the pit deepens. 

“What you guys did - ” He cuts himself off, giving his head a rough shake. “I really admire it.”

“I don’t need you to do that,” she says, but he can tell that she appreciates it by the way her mouth tilts up. “I’m not telling you because I want sympathy, or whatever. I’m telling you because I want you to know that until we didn’t have a million things to worry about, we couldn’t focus on ourselves. We couldn’t focus on each other.”

“Okay,” Steve says, thinking he knows where this is going but not sure. 

“You and Tony,” she says, and yeah, that’s what he thought. “Without being weird about it - the whole world knows about Iron Man and Captain America. We’ve seen the Avengers come together and tear apart, and that’s all before you came here and we clued into the rest of it.”

Steve half-smiles. “That subtle, huh?”

“Very,” Denise says sarcastically. “I’m saying, Steve, that it makes sense. That it’s okay. You two had to deal with so much, all the time, and it makes sense that as soon as you got a chance to breathe at the same time, you figured out what you wanted from each other.”

Steve’s throat nearly closes up with emotion as he thinks of Tony, tinkering away in the compound and flying all over the country without complaint - well, without serious complaint. He did try to blame jet lag for his rotten mood the other day. He thinks of SI and the Foundation’s relief efforts and how Tony had proposed college funds for each of the kids. 

“I’ll check with Josie and Denise first,” he’d said over video chat, holding up his palms in anticipation of needing a defense. “I wouldn’t overstep. And if they don’t want to go to college, they can blow the money on whatever they want. I just want them to have the option. Pete’s been looking at schools before he starts applying, so it just had me thinking.”

It’s enough to have anyone falling so completely, irrevocably in love. If Steve hadn’t already been there, it still would have been as easy as anything. 

“We’ve got a lot of history,” he admits, and if  _ that _ isn’t the understatement of the century. 

Denise is scrutinizing him. “What, you don’t think it will last?”

It’s only when she says it that he realizes that it couldn’t be further from the truth. 

He trusts Tony, always has. From the moment he’d gone searching on the helicarrier and found those goddamn weapons, he'd trusted Tony with his very existence. Even when Ultron had happened, Steve had believed that Tony never meant any harm, that he’d always had the best of intentions no matter how sideways it went. He’d even trusted Tony’s faith in the Accords; the problem was he just hadn’t trusted anyone else involved. 

Then he’d heard from Bruce, and knew that he made the right call in sending Tony the phone. He knew that he’d made the right decision in sending the phone in the first place, in trusting Tony to hold onto it. For five years he’d held onto that trust, unwavering even as he drove up to a home where he knew he was almost certainly unwelcome. He’d trusted Tony to take them all away and back again, had trusted him to carry everyone to the end and out through the other side. 

It’s not blind faith, but trusting Tony is the closest Steve has felt to finding religion since he came out of the ice. 

When Denise places a tentative hand on his back, Steve is jerked back to the present. He pulls his head out of his hands, surprised by the wetness that has leaked into the lines of his palms.

“I don’t mean to upset you.”

“You haven’t,” Steve tells her. “I just - I know it will last.”

“Does that scare you?” she asks, like she’s genuinely curious. 

“No,” he says. “It’s the rest of it that scares me.”

She leaves her hand there, and Steve focuses on that as he gets out what’s been eating at him. 

“How can I have him without losing everyone else?”

“You’re not going to lose anyone,” she tells him, like she  _ knows _ , even though there’s no way she can. 

“I can’t keep everything,” he says, because it feels inevitable. “There’s Morgan in California, and he’s got the compound, and I’ve got here.” 

He doesn’t elaborate, because there are tears that he hasn’t cried for the better part of a year, and this isn’t the time. Denise doesn’t deserve to have that put on her. 

“You can keep whatever you work to keep,” Denise says. “You think we didn’t know you had another life? You think we thought you’d never go anywhere else?”

Steve looks at her head on, watching her kind, impossibly dark eyes that he’s seen run the gamut from fiercely determined to irrefutably loving. She’s done so much for everyone around her, and he doesn’t ever think he’ll be able to repay her for what she’s done for him. 

“You gave me a family,” he says, and getting the words out is simultaneously the easiest and hardest thing he’s done since he returned the stones. “I was so lost I couldn’t even see it.”

“I know,” Denise says, and the creak of the screen door draws their attention. It’s Josie, looking on like she’s fine with eavesdropping if they are. 

Steve just wipes his nose on his sleeve and gives Denise the best smile he can muster. 

“You’ll figure out what you want to do,” she says, and she pats his back before getting up and stretching out her back. 

“I want to do right by everyone,” Steve says. 

“Do right by yourself,” she says importantly. “For once in your life. Do right by yourself.”

And Steve spends the next few days figuring out exactly what that looks like. 


	5. Chapter 5

“Callie wants to visit.”

Beth sits in the front seat, feet kicked up on the dash as Steve drives. She’s been restless all day and Tony is busy trying to play nice for some investors, so Steve had suggested milkshakes and fries and a night drive. 

It hadn’t taken much convincing, and Steve hums around the straw of his shake. It’s peach flavored, a touch too artificial, but he’s been swapping back and forth for Beth’s Oreo. 

“She keeps apologizing for kissing me,” Beth says, slouching down even more and swirling the straw in the styrofoam cup. “Which makes me feel shitty.”

“Beth,” he sighs. 

“I’m sixteen,” she says stubbornly, fishing fries out of the paper bag. “I’m not putting any money into your swear jar.”

“There is no swear jar,” he insists. 

“She said it could be a late birthday present,” Beth keeps going. “We text just fine, and we’ve talked on the phone a few times. It’s been fine, except for when she’s apologizing.”

Steve glances over to see her rolling her eyes. 

“But I don’t know what it will be like to see her in person again,” Beth says. “And one of Elliot’s stupid friends has a crush on me, apparently, and he’s not half bad when he’s not bragging about how he’s gonna be a successful doctor someday.”

Steve holds out a hand, and she passes him the fry container. 

“But then Bonnie’s lab partner came out last month and says that girls are much better kissers. She made out with a senior at a house party, and apparently the girl was super nice and didn’t force anything, and tasted like peppermint schnapps and peanut M&Ms.”

“How,” Steve says, before he can help himself, “is that a good combination?”

Beth shrugs and takes a long drink of peach milkshake. “I don’t know, that’s just what she told Bonnie.”

“Just be careful,” Steve says, because it’s the only thing he can reasonably think to say. “You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or lead anyone on.”

She just licks salt from her fingers and straightens up, putting her feet on the floor to kick off her flip-flops before her bare feet are pressed up against the windshield. Steve knows he’s going to be wiping footprints off the glass tomorrow, but doesn’t stop her. 

“I won't,” she says. “At least, I’m going to try not to. Anyway. Are you still visiting Tony for Memorial Day? Because Callie wants to see you again but that’s the weekend she was thinking of coming.”

“That’s the plan so far,” Steve says, and he snags the Oreo shake before Beth can suck up the rest of it. 

“Hm.” Beth pushes her feet flat on the glass. “If you won’t be there, can we take the pull-out?”

When they get back to the house, he sends Beth inside and reaches for his phone. 

“It’s not funny,” he protests as Tony laughs. “She’s sixteen, Tony!”

“Just be glad you don’t need to help anyone buy condoms again,” Tony says. “In fact, be glad that there’s no chance of pregnancy for this one.”

“Not unless she goes for the future doctor,” Steve says, banging his head against the headrest. “Maybe I need to stay back and - ”

“Absolutely not,” Tony interrupts. “I’ve been paying contractors obscene rates in order to get a pool and outdoor kitchen up and running by the time you get here. There is no way - you do not need to chaperone. The number of bodies in that house count as more than enough birth control. I can _personally_ attest to that fact.”

“Thought we didn’t need to worry about birth control,” Steve counters, and then Tony is grumbling something about getting Steve away from children for once in his life. 

“I’ve got to go,” Tony says regrettably, just as the conversation veers into dangerous territory, with Steve stumbling over how much he is looking forward to being together again. Tony likes teasing him, saying that Steve’s always looking for excuses to keep the distance between them, but Steve sees right through it to the insecurity underneath. Try as he might to balance everything in his life right now, he doesn’t want Tony thinking for even one second that Steve won’t do whatever Tony needs of him. 

For a brief moment, Steve thinks of that fight on the side of the highway. He’d called Tony out for never letting Steve do anything for him, and while part of that dynamic remains, he’s doing what he can to achieve equilibrium between them. 

“Rhodey’s here and desperate for attention,” Tony continues on. “But let Beth do what she wants, okay? She’s not up to anything unusual for her age.”

“I’m going to write that down,” Steve says. “Repeat it back to you when Morgan’s asking to borrow the bed you sleep in so she can figure whether or not she might be bisexual.”

Tony squawks and splutters at that, and Steve grins. 

“Bold of you to assume you’ll be around that far into the future, Rogers,” Tony retorts, but Steve can hear the fondness in his tone. 

“I don’t think it’s that bold at all,” Steve counters, and he knows that adoration is thick in his throat. 

They don’t say anything about it, but Steve knows that they both know.

*

No matter what, Steve insists on keeping his old duffel. He even refuses to let Tony send a plane for him, but when his boarding pass informs him that he’s been upgraded to first class, he decides it’s not worth fighting about. After all, first class on a flight this length is hardly noteworthy. The extra legroom is appreciated though, and the flight attendant clearly knows who he is as she repeatedly and eagerly offers complimentary cocktails and snacks. 

He declines the cocktails but accepts the questionable meat and cheese sampler and a packet of Skittles that remind him of Lance. Before he deplanes, he counts out a generous number of bills and refuses to let her turn them down. She blushes and he knows it’s going to be a story she tells everyone she meets, how a post-apocalyptic Captain America had flown in the first row and given her a hefty tip. 

It’s better than being asked to pose for a picture for social media, but as he’s waiting at the curb with his cap pulled low over his brow, he realizes that he doesn’t hate that concept as much as he had six months prior. 

Wanda picks him up because the flight lands early and Tony is delayed in the city doing something with Peter. Bucky and Sam are rushing a recon mission to get back for the holiday weekend, and Rhodes won’t leave the compound while Carol has stopped in for a visit. 

“Good to see you,” Wanda says, and she gives him an easy smile before merging onto the highway. 

“When’d you learn to drive?” he asks, amused. 

“Ah,” she says, a guilty look crossing her features. “I don’t drive in the traditional sense, exactly.”

And he can see the faint wisps of red slipping out from her palms, and really, he shouldn’t be surprised. 

“I’d volunteer to take over, but you look like you've got it handled,” he grins.

She just pulls her left leg up to rest on the seat, and they settle into easy conversation about life in the compound. Words come much more readily from her than ever before, and while she’ll never be as talkative as Sam, he’s content to let the lulls come and go as they make their way through the suburbs and into the country.

He learns that they’ve been through five different coffee makers in the last month alone because Bucky can’t figure out how to work them and inadvertently ends up smashing them to bits in his frustration. Dr. Cho and Bruce come by at least once a month to consult on whatever they’re needed for, and Thor has contacted them to announce that he plans on visiting on the anniversary of the battle. 

That makes Steve go quiet, leaning against the door and battling his mounting nerves. 

The compound looks different but similar enough that if he hadn’t lived there as long as he had, it might take a while to pinpoint the differences. As it is, when he gets out of the car, he feels like he could puke up his meat and cheese platter. 

But Wanda just smiles at him kindly, and maybe everyone has gotten the memo to handle him with kid gloves, because there’s no sign of a welcome committee. There’s a quiet electronic hum as he’s led through hallways and up open stairs, admiring the design. It’s got Tony written all over it, from the mementos installed in alcoves behind glass to the holograms sprouting up in midair. 

“I can show you to your room if you want,” Wanda offers. “Or we can do the full tour.”

Steve thinks of Tony, who has let him know that he’s breaking at least half a dozen traffic laws in order to make it upstate as soon as possible, and leaves his duffel on a table in the hall outside the common area. 

“I’ll take the tour,” he says. “Might be nice to run into some old faces.”

*

Carol holds herself with both authority and grace, and Steve feels like she’s peeling him apart from the inside out as she sips steaming tea. 

“Well,” she says eventually, pushing loose hair behind an ear and acting as though she isn’t wearing an oversized button-down, underwear, and nothing else in the middle of the afternoon. “Now I understand the urgency regarding the pool.”

Utterly nonplussed, Steve watches her leave the kitchen like she owns the place. 

Wanda is actually hiding a delicate laugh behind her hands. 

“She makes herself comfortable,” is the only explanation. 

Yeah, _no kidding_ , Steve thinks incredulously. 

Wanda shows him the training rooms, which range in size from small and suited for recovery, to enormous and designed for group tactical scenarios. It’s familiar enough that she doesn’t have to explain much, and he knows that she doesn’t need to be walking him through everything, but the company is nice. 

Then come the labs, grouped by subject matter, and without prompting, Wanda tells him, “Tony’s is closer to his room. I think there’s a secret passageway connecting them, but I haven’t checked the blueprints yet.”

The residential wing is quiet, and Steve suspects superior soundproofing techniques. He sees the picture wall and they spend a solid fifteen minutes in front of it, recounting memories and laughing at the dry erase marker someone has taken to the glass fronts. There’re devil horns on Bucky in a few, and Tony’s got drawn-on armor in one of him and Morgan. 

“It’s a pity she’s with her mother this weekend,” Wanda says, as she lets Steve peek in her room. “Tony says she’d love the pool.”

“She would,” Steve says, lingering over a small photo tucked into a mirror frame. It’s of Wanda and Vision, and Steve respectfully doesn't comment on it. 

She points out the rest of the rooms, tells Steve that Morgan has her own next to Tony’s on the next floor up, and he says he’ll check out his room later. For the time being, they mosey on back to the common area where Carol is now dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and Rhodes is at the stove.

“Fajitas for dinner,” Rhodes says, indicating the chopped onion and peppers on a cutting board. “Welcome back, Captain.”

“It’s just Steve, now,” he says, and they shake hands while Carol pulls tequila out of seemingly nowhere. 

“I’m making margaritas,” she says, stealing Rhodes’ knife and grabbing a bag of limes. “What are the chances Tony shows up with Parker?”

“More like, what are the chances Tony lets Parker look at a margarita?”

Carol just shrugs and slices limes in half. “He’ll have to build up his tolerance at some point. I mean, look at the company.”

Steve just rolls up his sleeves and offers to help, and before Rhodes can finish asking him to scoop avocados for guacamole, Carol is pushing a pitcher into his chest. 

“Squeeze the limes,” she directs. “You’ve got super strength or something, don’t you?”

The arch to her brows feels like a challenge, and Steve sets out to make the best pitcher of margaritas anyone has ever seen. 

*

Steve’s about to vibrate out of his skin. Every inch of him is buzzing when Tony sweeps in just as they’ve started eating, fixing himself a plate and then sliding into the seat next to Steve with not so much as a greeting. 

“I can’t believe you’ve started without me,” he said upon entering, Peter hot on his heels, and then spent the next five minutes unable to stop ragging on Carol for taking advantage of his hospitality.

“I can put you right back in that patch of space I picked you up from at any time, you know,” Carol drawls once Tony’s done ranting. 

Rhodes chokes on a tortilla chip at that, and when Carol merely entertains Tony’s staring contest, Wanda is kind enough to dislodge the chip and restore Rhodes’ ability to breathe. 

“I think people would miss me too much,” Tony says confidently. “Right?”

“Wouldn’t miss you one bit,” Rhodes coughs, pounding a fist on his chest. 

Carol looks entirely unconcerned as she finishes her drink, and gets up to pour another. 

“Parker?” she asks, another glass already in hand. “You’re at least eighteen, aren’t you?”

Peter, who’s been doing a good job of keeping his head down and laughing at all the appropriate moments while tucking into his food, jerks his head up while his knee hits the bottom of the table. 

“Um. No ma’am. I mean - no, Captain. Captain Marvel? Miss Carol. I’m not - and you’ve got to be at least twenty-one anyway, so - ”

He flounders under her unimpressed gaze, and Tony reaches over to pat his shoulder sympathetically.

“You know what, that’s fine,” Peter says, holding his hands up as Carol sits down and slides the glass his way. “I’m close enough.”

“Like hell you are,” Tony says, and he goes for the glass before Carol’s threatening him with a photon blast, keeping him from the margarita. “Excuse me, might I remind you that this is _my_ kitchen - ”

“If I’d wanted to do something nice for you, I would have,” Carol cuts him off, and Steve could spot the indignant expression on Tony’s face from a mile away. He just drains the rest of his drink, icy and spicy-sweet with enough bite to make him feel something, even if there’s no way he’s getting drunk, not even with how much alcohol Carol’s added, and gets up from his seat. 

“I’ll bring you one,” Steve tells Tony, and it’s the first they’ve spoken directly to each other, but the warmth on Tony’s face as he shoots him an appreciative look more than makes up for it. 

“Finally,” Tony says, stealing a used lime wedge from Steve’s plate and sucking on it. “Someone who gives a shit.”

When Steve sits back down and hands Tony a frosty glass, he’s rewarded with a hand on his thigh. Tony ultimately takes it back to eat, complaining about how Rhodey always overcooks his steak and should leave it to the professionals, but then Tony’s hand is back and just a smidge higher, and Steve’s feeling ready to crawl out of his skin for another reason entirely. 

Peter gets hilariously pink and tipsy, determinedly quiet in order to avoid embarrassing himself, and Steve respects that. Wanda doesn’t drink, and as she directs the dishes to soak in the sink with practiced hand motions, Steve leans over to whisper to Tony over their freshened drinks. 

“Can Carol even get drunk?” he murmurs, lips brushing Tony’s ear. He can nearly feel Tony shiver and tamps down his grin. 

“I don’t think that’s the point here,” Tony mutters, and uses his glass to point to where Rhodes is sprawled loosely in his seat, progressively growing sloppier as Carol comes back from mixing another pitcher full. 

He gets that, because Tony is flushed around the neck, hardly noticeable to anyone except for Steve who’s looking closely at every visible bit of skin. The hand on his leg has progressively gotten higher and higher, edging into the kind of territory Steve isn’t sure he can come back from, and the firm press of Tony’s fingers isn’t helping at all. No one else can see, not unless Carol or Wanda really can see through solid surfaces, but it feels vaguely possessive and there’s an appeal there that makes blood rush in Steve’s ears.

He doesn’t let Carol top them off as everyone gradually gets up, and goes their separate ways. 

“You stay out of my hot tub!” Tony calls after Carol, who ignores him as she carries the pitcher towards the stairs that lead to the newly completed outdoor area. “Rhodey, I’m writing you out of my will if you defile my brand new hot tub before I do - ”

Steve cuts him off with a kiss, and it’s easy to get sucked in when they’re the only ones left in the room. They take long moments to become reacquainted with the feel of each other, and by the time they’re gasping and getting desperate, Steve is ready to lift Tony up onto the counter and carry on. 

Somehow, Tony must possess an ounce of self-control, because he presses a halting hand to Steve’s chest. Sure, he’s groaning and tilting his head back, and Steve takes advantage to suck kisses down the column of neck that’s been taunting him ever since Tony walked in the door, but it’s enough for them to unscramble their brains for five seconds. 

“I saw your bag in the hall,” Tony says, panting. “No one show you to your room yet?”

Steve pauses, and when Tony does too, they disentangle themselves to stand half an inch apart. 

“Wanda offered,” Steve admits, the nerves coming back. 

Tony’s hand finds his, tugging him towards the hall. “Come on.”

So Steve picks up his duffel and lets himself be led back to the residential area, cool nighttime track lighting kicking in. When Tony stops them in front of a door that looks just like the others, Steve does as instructed and uses his handprint to let himself in. FRIDAY welcomes him and the room looks so much like the one he had at the old compound with similar furniture and coloring. 

“No one else has access,” Tony says, hovering in the doorway as Steve slowly makes his way around the perimeter. “I mean, I have the overrides, obviously - but I figured when you came, you’d change that. Give them to Sam or something.”

“It’s nice,” Steve says, glancing at Tony after peeking in the closet. It’s empty, all the drawers are empty, all the shelves are bare and it’s all done very minimally with the clear intent for it to be filled up with whatever Steve desires. 

Tony just half-shrugs, leaning against the doorframe and for some reason reluctant to cross the final threshold. 

“Got a super-sized bed for the super soldier,” Tony says. “There’s the attached bathroom - you’ve got an extra tall shower head, lots of attachments that are supposed to help with sore muscles. A custom bathtub, although I don’t know, do you like soaking?”

Steve adjusts the strap of his bag and stands in front of Tony who looks at him questioningly. 

“So that’s...your room,” Tony says, gesturing into the comfortably sized room. “Told you, you had one. Meant it. It’s the biggest, but don’t tell Rhodey, he’ll get offended and demand an addition to his. Well, the biggest after mine, but that doesn’t count, obviously - ”

A well-placed hand to the mouth shuts Tony up, and Steve can see that Tony looks almost nervous, like he’s chattering away at a mile a minute because he doesn’t know what else to do. Steve’s nervous too, his mouth going dry as he licks his lips and slips a not-so-casual hand into Tony’s back pocket, pulling him in. 

Tony’s eyes darken immediately, bodies pressed together. 

“Where’s your room?” Steve dares to ask, and he watches Tony’s eyes flicker to the empty room, to Steve’s duffel, and then land back on Steve’s face. 

“Let me show you,” Tony says, and Steve lets go of him only long enough for Tony to fumble down the hall and slam a hand against a pad for access. Still, even then, Steve crowds behind him, hands gripping his hips. 

“Did you put our rooms on the same floor on purpose?” he wonders. 

“No!” Tony protests, getting the door open with minor difficulty. 

“So when you rebuilt things, you weren’t - ”

“No,” Tony says, and Steve wastes no time in closing the door and dropping his bag to the floor. “I swear, it just had to do with space constraints, and - ”

Steve doesn’t get to hear the rest of his justification because he’s too busy shoving Tony against the door, and then they’re kissing hard and picking up right where they left off in the kitchen. Despite the fact that they’ve really only been building to this for a couple of months, Steve can feel the years of repressed hunger and want rearing their violent heads, and he’s got his hands under Tony’s shirt before he can really think about it. Thankfully Tony doesn’t mind, moaning into Steve’s mouth as he clutches onto Steve’s biceps, fingers digging hard enough that they could leave marks behind. 

They stumble and all Steve can think is _bed,_ pushing Tony where he wants him, and Tony goes without complaint for once in his life, just as eager and frantic as Steve is. He just rubs up against Steve’s front, jerks his hips until they nearly tip onto the mattress, and they begin losing clothing like their lives depend on it. They can barely manage it all before Tony’s arching into Steve, teeth on his collarbone as things just keep unraveling. 

It’s a crash course then, bruising kisses across every stitch of exposed skin and hurried touches exploring as thoroughly as they can in their desperation. Steve feels stripped down to his core, Tony’s mouth hot and leaving delicious burns down his abdomen until he can flip them and return the favor. Tony grunts when Steve pins him down, heavy hands on bucking hips while he sucks kisses into solid thighs. There’s a hand in his hair and Steve is ready to oblige, but then he’s being pulled up, _up,_ and Tony looks wild and lost and found all at the same time, and it’s so much that Steve doesn’t understand how they aren’t both plastered all over the walls already. 

They kiss messily, unrefined but needy as Steve straddles him and Tony rakes blunt fingernails down his back. By the time Tony’s begging him - _Steve, need you,_ so loud and intoxicating - it’s impossible to do anything but give into him, and Steve takes his time until they’re both breathless and Tony is nodding fervently and curling fingers into the sheets under him. 

Steve thumbs at the sweat on Tony’s brow and then he’s being rolled on his back, shifting obediently as Tony guides him. He draws strength from somewhere, resisting the urge to lose it all as he picks up where Tony leaves off, holding on so tight that he almost worries it’s hurting until Tony’s plants a steadying hand on his chest for leverage and then fire licks through Steve’s veins and all he can think is that nothing will ever compare to the sight above him. They move together until Steve swears they’re one, rocking and gasping and promising each other everything there is to promise. 

In the back of his mind, Steve tries to hold on, but there’s nothing to grasp at besides heat and Tony’s smooth skin. He grunts Tony’s name until it’s all he remembers and Tony is beautiful, so beautiful that Steve can’t help but reach down and feel for him. As much as they want to take their time, it’s not long before Tony is crying out and he’s so gorgeous when he whimpers like that, coming completely undone until he’s trembling and Steve is pleading for him. When he falls apart all over Steve’s hand and stomach, that’s all it takes for Steve to see stars and follow him while crying out, thoroughly worn out and unable to resist any longer. 

They collapse together, Tony’s face tucked in Steve’s neck and they’re both sweaty with heaving chests pressed together. Steve feels like he might never catch his breath again, never wants to if this is what he gets to have, and it’s like all his bones have dissolved with the sheer intensity of it. His brain goes blissfully empty and it’s got to be the same for Tony, who just puffs short, uneven breaths against Steve’s thundering pulse point. 

There’s nowhere else Steve wants to be. Nothing else he’d want to do. 

*

Eventually, they peel themselves off the twisted, sweaty sheets. Tony makes a comment about having to upgrade his shower to super-soldier standards, but Steve just grips his backside tight and kisses him against the glass partition while the water heats. His eyes are bright as Steve nudges them under the pressured spray, delivering wet kisses behind his ear, along his forehead, down the back of his neck until hands wander and they’re both sprouting goosebumps even as steams gathers around them, slipping in the infinitesimal space between them. 

Tony can’t wrench his gaze away, starry-eyed and single-minded, and Steve knows he’s just as bad. They dry each other off and find the blankets when they find the bed again, and Steve holds Tony to him and never wants to let go. He only stills once they’re completely tangled, legs slotted together and the planes of Tony’s bare back a grounding presence against Steve’s still-pounding heartbeat. 

He trails fingertips down Tony’s arm, traces the delicate bones of his wrist and then lightly tickles up exposed abdominals until he’s sketching over where he knows the scars from the arc reactor spread out. Tony doesn’t seem bothered, his breathing approaching that evenness that Steve knows like he’d always known the weight of his shield. 

Abruptly, Tony’s hand is covering his. 

“I love you.”

Steve flattens his hand, feels the stutter of Tony’s heart, and wedges them even closer together. 

“I love you,” he says directly into Tony’s ear, closing his eyes at the sudden rush of emotion that brings that tell-tale prickling to his eyes. 

“In case you didn’t know - ”

“I know,” Steve barely manages to get out, overcome with it all. “I know. I love you, too.”

Tony links their fingers together, and gradually their tendons and ligaments relax until their joined hands rest easy. 

Never once does Tony’s breathing return to that uneven alertness, and Steve just about drowns in the privilege of it all.

*

When Steve wakes, he’s neither surprised nor disappointed to find Tony absent. Instead he just calls for FRIDAY who points him in the direction of Tony’s lab - which does have secret passageway access, he makes a note to confide in Wanda. He doesn’t bother with clothes, just asking FRIDAY for blackout mode. Tony is absorbed enough in whatever he’s tending to with a furrowed brow that he doesn’t notice, not till Steve approaches from behind and wraps his arms around bare shoulders. 

“Hi,” Tony says, adorably bleary as he manipulates his hologram. He finishes something, then reaches a hand back to pat Steve’s hip - he whirls around on his stool, eyebrows shooting up as the realization hits. “I at least put on sweatpants.”

“You’re sitting on leather,” Steve points out, and his heart skips when he recognizes those sweatpants, recognizes them as his own from months ago. “Skin on leather isn’t very pleasant.”

“And where do you plan on sitting?” Tony asks in amusement, and Steve carefully places himself on Tony’s lap, careful to let his own legs carry most of his weight. 

“Right here,” Steve says certainly, taking Tony’s mouth with his own without hesitation. 

Whatever he’d been working on must not have been important, because Tony doesn’t put up any semblance of a fight. Instead he just lets Steve tug at the waistband of his sweatpants and swirls patterns over the length of his beautiful, exposed spine. Eventually, Steve sinks to his knees and then Tony is moaning, running his hands through Steve’s hair until he’s twisting and pulling hard and muttering nonsense about how the caveman hair isn’t so bad after all. Steve smiles as best as he can, hands braced on the outside of Tony’s thighs. It’s lazy and perfect and when they’re done, he settles back on Tony’s lap and stays there. 

“I can - ”

“No,” Steve sighs, content to bury his face in Tony’s hair. “Just want to be here with you.”

So they sit, arms around each other, and Steve has never been more thankful for the invention of glass with the ability to turn opaque on demand. 

*

After they make their way back to the bedroom with the intention of getting some more clothes on their bodies, Tony enthusiastically returns the favor and Steve nearly puts a fist through the wall. Tony refuses to allow him a shirt, and Steve just rolls his eyes as he pulls on pants. 

“Who am I, Danvers? Am I allowed to ask what’s up with that, by the way?”

Tony shrugs as they make their way to the kitchen, stomachs rumbling and sun shining bright through all the windows. 

“You mean besides that fact that she refuses to call Earth home for more than a few days at a time?”

Steve tilts his head to the side as he contemplates the contents of the fridge and Tony gets a mug for coffee. 

“To be fair, I’m not sure the planet could safely contain both your ego and hers for any significant period of time.”

Tony pretends to be mad about it, but he accepts the kiss Steve presses to his temple and looks inordinately pleased. It’s Sunday morning, so Steve flips pancakes as everyone filters in. They’re out of blueberries to Tony’s displeasure, but Steve sprinkles miniature chocolate chips in them to placate him.

“Oh, chocolate chip pancakes!” Peter says excitedly when he appears, his pajamas dragging on the floor and wrinkles from his pillow still pressed into half his face. Steve’s not entirely sure he’s awake, but then he asks if he can get some eggs going, and Tony moans out a yes that has Steve looking at him sternly. 

“What?” Tony asks, all innocent behind his mug from where he’s posted up at the counter. He’s on a tablet, looking like he’s picking up wherever he left off in his workshop, and the memory combined with the sound sends a flush flooding down Steve’s cheeks and towards his chest. 

Steve opts not to respond, and instead just budges over to give Peter room to work on the stove. Thankfully his blush seems to have receded by the time Bucky slouches in, having just gotten back. 

“San went to change,” he explains, and Tony pulls a face at the smell but Steve just pulls Buck in for a swift hug. “Thank fuck, who got the coffee started?”

“Yours truly,” Tony says proudly, flicking through his holograms, and Steve wishes there was a way he could cook and watch him at the same time. 

As it is, he slides a plate in front of Tony, who stares at him from across the island before cutting his eyes towards Bucky who is helping himself to the pan of still-frying bacon. 

“I could really use some orange juice with my breakfast,” Tony remarks loudly, and Bucky wastes absolutely no time in flipping him off with his fleshless hand. 

“No orange juice,” Sam says, pulling a shirt on as he enters, Carol and Rhodes coming in behind him. “Hey, man. Look at you.”

Steve grins at him, passing him a loaded plate. 

“Are we starting a nudist colony?” Sam asks, not even bothering to sit before he’s got a mouthful of eggs and is pointing his fork in Steve’s direction. “Between you and Danvers - ”

“I wear clothes,” Carol says, rolling her eyes as she goes for the coffee. “Just because some of us are confident with our bodies - ”

Rhodes snipes Tony’s mug, prompting loud complaints as it’s carried to the pot that’s in desperate need of refilling. 

“If you don’t start a new one - ” Tony starts, trying to steal Bucky’s as he passes by on his way to the table. 

“Don’t even think about it,” Bucky says with a glare, and Tony’s arm shrinks back.

Carol fills an enormous mug to the tippy top, and Rhodes dramatically drains the entire carafe while looking Tony straight in the eye the entire time. Tony’s jaw unhinges in outright shock, and Steve tries not to laugh as Rhodey and Carol walk their mugs to the kitchen table. 

“That’s it,” Tony says, putting his tablet down. “I’m evicting you both. That’s right, you too, Jim.”

“Since when do you call me Jim?” Rhodes asks, obeying Carol’s order for him to protect their coffees as she gets them food. 

“Since you don’t live here anymore,” Tony quips. 

“Do you ever shut up?” Sam says rhetorically.

“Steve,” Tony demands, and Steve shrugs in surrender. 

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” he says, pouring out the last of the batter as Wanda shows up. “I don’t know how to make coffee.”

“I hope you’re ready to learn,” Sam says, finally migrating to the table. 

Tony gets up long enough to get the coffee going again, because Carol was cruel enough to leave the pot on the opposite end of the counter, and then sits back at the counter and whines until everyone is seated with a plate and Steve pulls out the barstool next to him. 

“Here,” Steve says, setting down his plate and two full cups of coffee. “Happy?”

“Very,” Tony says, picking up a cup and snagging a bite of Steve’s pancakes. 

As Peter and Bucky start bickering about alternative breakfast beverages, Steve can’t help but smile and push the second mug Tony’s way. When it earns him a curious look, Steve just says, “In case someone tries to steal yours again.”

That earns him a giant smacking kiss, which earns the both of them several disgusted exclamations from the peanut gallery. 

“Get a room!” Rhodes says, voice raised. 

“I have one. In fact, I have an entire compound that you’re about to be forcibly removed from,” Tony retorts, and Steve just grabs his face and - well, he figures out that it’s actually not all that difficult to shut Tony up. 

*

Steve goes for a run and comes back to find Tony and Peter with their heads together over some kind of suit improvements, so he finds Bucky in the gym. It’s been a while since he’s sparred with anyone, but they’re pretty evenly matched and Bucky never pulls any punches, so he finds his footing with minimal difficulty. Sam lifts weights in the corner and makes fun of Steve and his breakfast attire, but Bucky just rolls his eyes and blocks Steve’s next blow. 

By the time he’s ready for a shower, Bucky and Sam head to get some sleep. Tony’s still busy so when Wanda invites him to the media room and asks for his input on a few things, if he doesn’t mind, he goes with only minor hesitation. 

He doesn’t mind, not as he watches footage from a previous mission and indicates where she might have hesitated too long or been overly aggressive. When they’ve wrapped up and switched to watching a movie that Peter comes in and recommends, Steve finds his mind wandering and excuses himself halfway through. 

Despite having wrapped up with Peter, Tony’s predictably still sequestered in his workshop. He’s wearing safety glasses, which is new for him, and Steve takes his time poking around the benches. There’s an entire section of the large room dedicated to Iron Man developments, and Steve smiles to himself as he picks up a panel that looks like it belongs to the left arm. 

“We’ve been trying to simulate the impact of certain celestial forces,” Tony calls from where he’s seated, shaking out his hands. At Steve’s look, he waves to the tools in front of him. “Just cramping.” 

“You’re not planning on going into space, are you?” Steve asks, but any potential concern vanishes when Tony shakes his head rapidly. 

“Rhodey,” he explains. “His idea of romance, I don’t know. Damn fool.”

Steve makes his way between things, between heaps of scraps and what he swears looks like a children’s biology playset. He points to it as he gets close, and then pulls the safety glasses off Tony’s face to stroke the dent left behind on the bridge of his nose. 

“These are new.”

“Morgan,” Tony says, and Steve nods. “I guess I’ve got to set a good example for her, or whatever. That’s what Pete said. Guess I’ve got to set a good example for him, too.”

“You do set a good example,” Steve says, not needing to see it to believe it. 

Tony taps his foot a few times, then turns around to click a few things off. “Come on,” he says, jerking a thumb further down, past the suit scraps. “Want to show you something.”

And Steve goes without question, but stops when he sees the silver curve of something round and nearly flat hidden behind a bot that looks suspiciously like the old DUM-E and whirs in an almost identical manner. 

“Tony,” he says, petting the bot until it rolls out of the way enough for him to get a better look. “What’s this?”

And Tony backtracks until he’s standing next to Steve, looking like he’s been caught in the act. 

“Ah, fuck,” he says. “Yeah, now you’ve ruined it.”

“Ruined what?” Steve asks cautiously.

Tony fidgets with one of new DUM-E’s joints, avoiding Steve’s eyes as he talks. 

“Well - first we tried to salvage the shield, but that didn’t really work out. We’ve got quite a few weapons of mass destruction around, but turns out you can’t reverse engineer things that way. Thor thought he could work some Asgardian magic on it, but nothing successful. So I scanned the specs, and may have spent the last - how many months has it been? Nine-ish? Eight? Anyway. I’ve been trying to negotiate with T’Challa, but he’s one stingy bastard, let me tell you.”

Steve stares, unable to decide how he’s feeling as he sweeps his fingers along the edge of the very shield-like object leaning against a cabinet. 

“So this is…”

“A prototype,” Tony confirms. “I messed around with some other materials, but nothing else compares. I assume you know that.”

“I do,” Steve says, thinking back to when he’d first been in Wakanda after Siberia, and how T’Challa had offered to construct him a new shield, but Steve hadn’t been able to think about it without seeing anything other than Tony lying on the snowy concrete in his suit. He’d declined and asked if they couldn’t come up with something else, and Shuri had been more than happy to exercise a little freedom. 

“I’ve been negotiating,” Tony says like it’s nothing, when it’s decidedly something. “I think he’s just holding out, though. Waiting to see how much he can get me to offer. Course, he’ll probably just end up handing it over for nothing anyway, he’s slick like that.”

“Tony,” Steve says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m not - I’m not looking to be Captain America again.”

Tony tilts his head to look at him. “No one’s asking you to.”

“Feels like it,” Steve admits. “Wanda was asking for my advice earlier. And I was sparring with Buck, and - ”

He just shakes his head and looks down, only to feel Tony’s soft hand on his arm. 

“That’s why I wasn’t ready to come back,” he says, looking sideways to see nothing but patience and a willingness to listen, to understand. “If I’d come back before, I don’t know that I would have been able to say no. But I’m not ready to be Captain America again. I don’t know if I ever will be.”

“That’s okay,” Tony says, and Steve knows he’s being studied. “I’m serious, no one’s asking you to. You don’t ever have to go into open combat ever again, if you don’t want to.”

“So then the shield - ”

“Because as it turns out, there’s a bit of nostalgia in me after all,” Tony says, and he’s grinning ruefully. “It’s just something I want to do. For you, for me, who knows? Maybe it’s for my old man. If you don’t want it, I’ll give it to someone else. Hell, you don’t even have to use it. I can let Morgan use it as a sled in the winter.”

_“Tony.”_

“Point is,” he continues, “it’s up to you.”

“Don’t do that,” Steve says, shaking his head. 

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t work as well as I thought it did,” Steve says. “Turns out, when you leave something up to someone else, neither of you end up getting what you really wanted.”

They kiss, slow and steady and aimlessly, and when Tony pulls away, Steve kind of wishes that he wasn’t the only one who didn’t need to take a breath to survive. 

“So then what did you want to show me?” he asks, and Tony scoffs. 

“Well, now that nothing can live up to the big surprise of ‘I’m trying to build you a new shield….’”

Steve grabs his hand, squeezing. 

“I’m sure what you’ve got is impressive,” he says diplomatically, and when Tony pouts and reveals a weapon that looks suspiciously like a gun but he claims isn’t one, he makes sure to ask lots of questions and act very engaged. 

“Damn Barnes,” Tony says as he turns it over in his hands. “No matter how many times I try to turn him onto repulsor technology, he’s so old school. Hey, you’ll talk to him, yeah? Try to get him to accept this middle-ground?”

“Anything for you,” Steve says, accepting the not-a-gun to inspect. And then, leaning over to catch the corner of Tony’s mouth in a kiss, “You damn romantic fool.”

That’s definitely a blush, Steve thinks in satisfaction. 

*

The Memorial Day party is a roaring success. Clint and his family come up for it, and Steve’s kind of thrilled to have someone to man the grill with him. They talk about retirement and preteens and laugh at everyone else as they get overly competitive seeing who can land the biggest splash in the deep end of the pool. 

“I just don’t think it’s fair,” Sam says, arms crossed and looking at Wanda accusingly. “There’s no proof she isn’t manipulating the water, and - ”

“So,” Clint says, and Steve tunes back in. “Tony?”

It’s hard not to smile at that, as Steve looks to where Tony is refereeing the entire ordeal and playing devil’s advocate as Wanda politely offers Sam another chance at beating her. He’s wearing sinfully tight shorts and has stolen Steve’s sunglasses, his own still perched on the top of his head. 

“Who told you?” Steve asks, rotating the vegetable skewers. 

“Nobody had to,” Clint chuckles. “You didn’t bat an eye when he asked for help getting sunscreen on his back.”

Steve checks the status of the hot dogs. “What’s wrong with not wanting to get sunburned?”

“He’s part Italian. I don’t think he’s had a sunburn in his life.”

At least Steve can blame the heat in his cheeks on the flames from the grill, he figures. It’s not like he’s interested in maintaining plausible deniability, not when his thighs ache as pleasantly as they do, but when Tony comes by to rest a hand on the small of his back and ask if he wants another Long Island Iced Tea, he can’t quite meet Clint’s humored eyes. 

“This, coming from the guy who can barely be bothered to get his own coffee when Rogers is around,” Rhodes says as he passes, and Tony wastes no time in scowling after him. 

“I will push you in the pool,” he calls after him, which is a bit of an empty threat seeing how many times Rhodes has jumped in already, but it earns a round of laughter that has Tony looking pleased as punch while dipping his fingers into the waist of Steve’s swim shorts. 

“Not in front of the kids,” Clint says, exaggeratedly putting a hand over his eyes, and Steve just leans over to watch where Carol has somehow found a captive audience in the oldest two without managing to scare them away from the compound permanently. 

“Relax,” Tony says, but he pulls away anyway. “I am very PG-rated.”

“There's no point in lying about it,” Clint says, and Tony shoots him a highly affronted look before going to get Steve a new drink. 

He never spins out very far from Steve’s orbit, even as he asks Laura for advice on how to deal with headstrong daughters and dares Peter to challenge Bucky to arm wrestle. By the time the food is ready, Steve feels sufficiently ogled and he’s gotten plenty of opportunities to study Tony’s backside. He dips his feet in the pool while he eats hot dogs and watermelon slices at Tony’s side, and lets himself be splashed by Clint’s youngest until he’s finally called out of the pool to be forced to eat something of substance. 

“You know,” Tony says, when Steve’s licking mustard from his fingers after his second hot dog, “that’s very well and all, but does not compare to the real thing.”

Carol threatens to photon-beam his mouth shut, and while they antagonistically debate the realities of that statement, Steve leans back on his elbows and admires the cloudless sky. When Tony leans back on his hands, his biceps flex invitingly and Steve can’t resist the temptation to kiss the one nearest him. Tony doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even look at him - he just flips a hand over, and Steve pulls it to him so he can kiss the center of the palm before giving the appendage back to its owner. 

Somehow, they’ve figured this out. It feels a little like a bubble, but Steve realizes that he isn’t waiting for it to pop. There’s no other shoe to drop, and when he slides into the water because the heat bearing down on him is making his head swim a little, he holds his breath and stays under for as long as it takes to convince himself not to drag Tony up to their room and ravish him six ways to Sunday. 

As much as he wants to, he knows he’ll regret not getting enough time with everyone. 

It takes a very long time for him to break the surface, and when he does, he catches Tony looking at him. There’s no concern in his expression; he just looks irrefutably enamored, and really, it’s nothing short of incredible. 

Steve gets sucked into some water game with Clint’s kids and Peter, fingers beyond pruney as Tony gets up and disappears inside for a bit. 

“Steve,” Peter says, and it’s really quite comical how self-aware he looks then. “I can call you that, right? Mr. Stark told me I could.”

“You can call me Steve,” he assures him. “And if I know Tony at all, he’s told you to stop calling him Mr. Stark.”

“Employer-employee boundaries are very important, Steve,” Tony says, approaching the edge of the pool. “I absolutely encourage him to call me Mr. Stark.”

The glint in his eyes absolutely says he's full of it. 

“That for me?” Steve asks, treading water till he reaches Tony and nods at the cherry popsicle in his hand. 

“This is for young Parker here,” Tony says, and he just barely avoids Steve’s outstretched arm to hand the wooden stick to Peter. “You’re a grown man, you can get your own dessert.”

“Really?” Steve deadpans. “You’re passing up a golden opportunity here?”

Tony turns thoughtful, then his eyes go wide. 

“Pete, I’m going to need that back _immediately - ”_

Steve nearly inhales half the pool with how hard he laughs, and finally manages to stop coughing up chemically-treated water by the time Tony is set on the edge and offering to share his own chocolate Drumstick. 

“I’m pretty sure you should be illegal,” Tony says, and Steve knows his eyes are tracing Steve’s tongue as he catches a melting trail of ice cream from the cone. 

“In 117 countries,” Steve says proudly from where his torso is fit between Tony’s legs, and it’s worth the shocked expression he gets in return. 

When Tony recovers, he says, “Hey, you wanna defile the hot tub tonight? It’s got a state-of-the-art filtration system.”

Steve pretends to think about it, letting Tony take the cone from him. 

“You just wanna beat Rhodes and Danvers to the punch.”

“Please,” Tony says dismissively. “I’ve got FRIDAY on top of that. She’s got strict orders to sound the alarms if they even think about it.”

He holds out the ice cream, and Steve makes sure to slurp at it obnoxiously. 

“You know,” he says, once Tony steals the cone back, claiming that Steve is getting all the good bits of the fudge core, “one day, she actually will turn her photon blasts on you. And then I’m going to have to find someone else to defile all your properties with.”

Tony is outraged, and Sam is pretending to gag at how Steve dots Tony’s knees and lower thighs with chocolate kisses, and Wanda is smiling behind oversized sunglasses, and Steve - 

Well, Steve thinks that this is it. 

This is where he’s supposed to be. This is what he’s supposed to be doing.

*

They defile the hot tub, and it’s the most glorious night of Steve’s life. 

*

Steve lets Tony fly him back in the Quinjet, but only because it gives him more time with everyone. 

Carol ducked out during the wee hours of the morning, which was a surprise to approximately nobody. Rhodes shakes Steve’s hand and there’s a silent conversation, and Steve knows that if he doesn’t do right by Tony and Morgan, he’ll be getting his ass kicked by the War Machine armor. 

Bucky hugs him for longer than ever before, and Steve is so grateful that he’s okay. So much could have gone wrong, but he’s got his childhood best friend asking him if he remembers what a pair of scissors look like, and it doesn’t get any better than that. 

“As if you’re one to talk,” Steve says, because while Bucky might be rocking a more cropped cut now, there’s photographic evidence of previous hairstyles.

Sam makes Steve promise to come back for reasons besides Tony. 

“I will not be an accompaniment to your booty calls,” Sam says, and Steve promises with an extra-wide, extra-genuine grin. 

Wanda looks so peaceful that Steve doesn’t even recognize her as the girl he met in Sokovia. She clasps their hands together and Steve trusts her, and when he pulls away with harmless red emanating from between them, she’s smiling. 

“You’ve earned this,” she tells him, pushing his hair behind his ear, and Steve wishes he’d thought to pack some of his growing collection of children’s hair accessories. 

He has to peel Tony away from Peter, who keeps denying that he needs to be dropped off back in Queens. 

“Let the kid take care of himself,” Steve says. 

“It’s not like he can call an Uber!” Tony says, pointing at the expansive grounds for emphasis. 

Once in the air, Tony lets FRIDAY take over the controls and they sit in the cockpit and debate whether or not it would be irresponsible to have sex without another human available to pilot in case of an emergency. As much as Tony argues that he can tap out and take over for FRIDAY in an instant, Steve’s seen enough to justify his reasonable doubt and they end up just talking with Tony half-curled against his chest. 

“So I was thinking,” Tony says, stroking the fine hair on Steve’s knuckles. 

“Oh, no.”

“Shut up,” Tony says, elbowing him. “Morgan’s done with school in a couple of weeks.”

“Same with my kids,” Steve says. 

“So I was thinking,” Tony says, his voice rising in that way where he’s demanding to be listened to, and Steve behaves. “That since your road trip kind of got derailed when you decided to adopt a million kids, we could pick up where you left off. Take Morgan for a week or two, and end up back in Malibu.”

Steve doesn’t even have to consider it. 

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?” Tony says, twisting around to look at him. “That’s it? Nothing about how you’ve got to spend time at the house, and how it’s a miracle that you and I haven’t blown up half the continent yet? Or - ”

“I can say no if you want me to,” Steve interrupts.

Tony clamps his mouth shut, and Steve kisses away the beginnings of a frown. 

“I might also have an ulterior motive.”

Steve just waits until Tony’s done squirming around. 

“I’ve been doing a lot of keeping up with the news,” he says, back to playing with Steve’s hands. “And keeping an eye on lots of people with special abilities.”

“Okay.”

“And I thought - that after our road trip, after I drop Morgan back with Pepper, we could stop in on a few of them.”

Steve just hums, turning his face to bury in Tony’s soft almost-but-not-quite curls. 

“And we can hammer out the details along the way, and nothing has to be set in stone. But I thought that somewhere down the line, you could figure out how you want to split your time, and spend some of it at the compound helping train up future Avengers.”

Steve stills, and Tony must sense the way he tenses because now he’s stroking Steve’s forearms reassuringly. 

“It’s just an idea,” he says expansively, as if to make sure that Steve knows he means it, that he’s not expecting anything right now. “Right now things have been quiet, but we both know it won’t always be like that. Realistically, the world is going to need some help again, and when that happens, I think you’re a pretty good candidate for teaching the next generation how we did things back in our day.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t taken this opportunity to take a crack at my age,” Steve remarks. 

“It was a close call,” Tony admits. “Just say you’ll think about it.”

“On one condition.”

“Anything.”

“You’re right there with me.”

Tony turns around again, and his eyes are warm and his kiss makes Steve’s toes curl. 

“Obviously,” Tony says when he breaks away, resting their foreheads together. “Where else would I be?”

Steve doesn’t want Tony to be anywhere else. He doesn’t want Tony to do anything else. 


	6. Chapter 6

Tony comments on how they're going to need a residence to accommodate the Quinjet if this is going to be a regular thing, and Steve forbids him from buying Denise and Josie any more houses. 

“I have a feeling that they wouldn’t object,” Tony says with a mighty sniff, and they open the front door and are immediately bowled over by more than a dozen bodies. 

It’s a mess and everyone wants hugs and Steve seems to have set a dangerous precedent when it comes to distributing presents upon returning from out of town, so Tony pulls his wallet out and counts the bills there while Steve hisses at him to put it away. 

“I’ve only got hundreds,” he says, and Crystal gets a dangerous look in her eye. “Unless you guys wanna take a hike and scavenge the Quinjet for supplies?”

Ben and Elliot beg for Tony to stay but he apologizes half a dozen times and talks about being needed in the California office and how he hasn’t seen his own daughter in way too long. 

“I’ll be back,” he tells them, crossing his heart even though he’s definitely lightyears away from being a practicing Catholic. Before he leaves, he yanks Steve outside to do something admittedly akin to a religious experience with his tongue and Steve’s mouth, and it’s the best goodbye he’s ever gotten. Beth and Bonnie volunteer to walk him to the Quinjet and Steve tries not to listen as the three of them head down the drive, but they all talk loudly and Steve hears far more than he’d like to. 

Yeah, he’s going to have to talk with Tony regarding what qualifies as appropriate when gossiping with teenagers. 

Denise and Josie exchange knowing looks as everyone begins to settle in, and really, Steve does want to sit down and talk with both of them, but the kids demand his attention and he’s more than happy to give it. He pulls Serena into his arms and teases her about getting too big for that soon, and Ben’s eyes grow to the size of dinner plates when Steve describes the training facilities and Tony’s workshop. 

After Denise and Josie agree to talk later in the week, he starts a load of laundry and Lance begs for a Golden Retriever as a reward if he gets a good report card at the end of the year. When Steve says no, Hannah just sidles into the tiny laundry room and informs him that they’ve been working on a PowerPoint presentation to convince him. He’s ready to explain all the reasons why a dog isn’t a good idea, but then there’s a loud crash from the other room and that’s definitely Christina crying and Jackson is shouting, so he asks them to table the pet requests and goes to make sure no one’s got a gushing head wound.

It’s good to be home. 

*

Before Steve talks to Denise and Josie, he gets on the phone with Tony, per Beth’s recommendation. 

“You’re the one who always talks about the importance of communication,” she says one afternoon after school, sitting on the couch watching cartoons with Serena and elbow-deep in a bag of salt and vinegar chips. She doesn’t have the whole story, but she’s got good instincts, and Steve almost begrudges her for it. “Besides. It worked for me and Callie.”

“I am not one of your high school gal pals,” he says, shaking his head and stealing a handful of chips for himself. “I don’t want to know.”

Beth barely spares him a glance, way too invested in whatever animals are talking on the tv. “Good, because I wasn’t going to tell you. Stop being weird and talk to him about whatever it is.”

He definitely doesn’t tell Tony that he’s getting advice from a teenager, but he does go on a drive while they talk. It’s been a while since Steve had to carefully pick out the things worth asking the most, knowing that any question he asked or comment he made could spiral into an unresolved argument, but he still surprises himself when what he intends to say isn’t what comes out of his mouth. 

“Aren’t you angry?”

“Angry about what?” Tony asks distractedly, and Steve knows that he’s still at the office doing whatever he does these days - it’s complicated and Steve’s sure that he could learn all about what it involves, owning a company when your ex-wife is the CEO, but he doesn’t care to. 

“Me, I guess,” Steve says, uncertain. “We never really talked about it. But I was gone when you woke up after Thanos, and - ”

“I wasn’t angry,” Tony says, like he didn’t see the conversation heading in this direction, which is fair. “Did I do something to make you think I was angry?”

“No,” Steve has to admit. “But I just assumed, we’ve been through a lot, and as much as we’ve talked about me, we haven’t really talked about you.”

“Steve,” Tony says, almost chiding, and Steve is almost embarrassed. “You might have spent all those years being emotionally constipated, but I spent them learning how to co-exist with someone else.”

He knows the role Pepper played in Tony’s life, but never thought the things learned in a marriage could ever apply to anything Tony would ever share with him.

“I wasn’t emotionally constipated,” Steve says. 

“Yeah, right,” Tony says, and he’s sarcastic but not cruel. “That’s why you’re asking me this now, instead of way back when.”

“So you’re not angry?” 

“No,” Tony says, and it’s so gentle and affirming that Steve almost can’t believe it. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard Tony like this, and it’s precious. “No, I’m not angry. You matter too much for me to be angry over shit that’s been over and done with for a long time.”

“But I didn’t - I didn’t even do anything for you to forgive me,” Steve says, struggling. 

“Hey,” Tony says, still soft in ways that are so new but Steve wants to experience a million times over. “Is that what you need? Do you need me to forgive you for everything?”

And Steve doesn’t realize his face is wet until he can’t respond because he’s too choked up, and Tony talks him through it with soothing words and really, Steve shouldn’t find it so difficult to fathom that Tony’s heart is this big considering the life he’s lived, but he struggles and by the time he’s pulled into the driveway, he’s still crying. 

“Let it out,” Tony tells him. “Do I need to come over there? It might take a while, I don’t have a suit and Rhodey took the Quinjet back to the compound, but I can probably make it by midnight if I get going now.”

And it’s so much, so much more than Steve ever believed he deserved. He keeps wrestling with it, less often than he used to, but Tony’s got so much to give and Steve doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to give it all back. 

When Steve says that, Tony just tuts quietly. 

“It’s not tit for tat,” he says, like he just knows this for a fact. “That's not how this is going to work.”

“Then what is there?” Steve says, and his throat and eyes feel raw. 

“There’s just you and me,” Tony says simply. “Giving each other what we need.”

Steve swallows a few times until he’s sure he won’t end up letting out a sob, and then says, “And what do you need?”

“What a good question,” Tony says like he means it. “This.”

“This?”

“Honesty,” Tony says, and he’s so good at being soft and making it seem like this isn’t the big ordeal that Steve is terrified it could turn into. “Letting me in, the way you are now. You want to know why I’m not angry?”

Steve wipes at his face, but the tears are still coming. “Why?”

“Because you’re not who you were eight years ago,” Tony says, as if that’s all that needs to be said. “You’re not who you were six years ago, or even a year ago. That Steve Rogers? Any of them? Yeah, it would have been a mess if we’d come anywhere close to this.”

“Probably,” Steve agrees, chuckling wetly. 

“But it turns out, people actually can change,” Tony continues. “If they want to, or if they’re forced to, or whatever. Not everyone changes. But I did. And you have.”

And Steve is reminded of something Denise said to him, something about finally getting the opportunity to be on the same page, and that makes him think of something else. 

“I trust you,” he says, wiping his face again, and this time it stays dry. “If you tell me you’re not angry, if we can leave everything in the past, I trust you.”

Steve only goes inside after spending a very long time convincing Tony not to get on a plane to hold him through the night. 

Even though he doesn’t need that anymore, it’s just as meaningful to know that he’s got someone willing to. 

*

Eventually they do hammer out tentative plans for the summer. It’s like a giant game of telephone, with Tony needing to work out Morgan’s schedule with Pepper first. Then Steve takes that and talks with Denise, and after that he goes back to Tony who talks with Sam and Rhodes and - 

Eventually, they hammer it all out. 

Crystal graduates middle school and they use the excuse to throw a little party and invite all her friends. The high school kids all have end of the year parties to attend and Steve makes Elliot swear to call him if anyone needs a ride or rescuing in general. It feels a little like the end of an era and when he mentions this, Josie just smacks him. 

“No one is going anywhere,” she says. “Manny and Bonnie have another year before they graduate.”

Steve doesn’t ever want any of them to go. He doesn’t even want to go; it had taken all that talking for him to concede three weeks away from the house, and that had only been after he’d sat down with all the kids in small groups to make sure they were okay with it. 

“So if Tony’s coming to pick you up,” Serena had said, “does that mean I get to see Morgan again?”

Beth had immediately asked if they could take her to Dallas on the way, and Elliot wants to be dropped off at some month-long college summer program that Tony had helped him with applications for. That’s what helps cement the dates, and when Steve reluctantly admits that he’s having a hard time being okay with leaving for such a large chunk of time, Tony offers to spend their first few days at the house to help with the transition. 

“Are you sure that won’t interfere with our schedule?” Steve asks on the phone. 

“So we stop at a few less national monuments,” Tony says, like it’s no big deal. “Morgan is just going to have to suck it up, and you’ll drive us through the night once or twice.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, immensely grateful. “I know they’ll appreciate the extra time with you.”

“Steve,” Tony says, in that way that Steve is no longer afraid of. “Of course I want extra time with them. They’re your kids.”

Steve tries to laugh, but it gets stuck. He’s spent so long dodging it, scared to admit what everyone means to him. After all the grieving he’d been forced to rush through after waking up in a new century, he’d been subconsciously unwilling to let anything new get close enough to mean anything to him. It’s been a journey, learning that it’s okay to take a risk and love people who might be gone one day, while trusting that they won’t leave, and that if they do, he can handle it. 

“They really are, aren’t they?”

“I could’ve told you that months ago,” Tony tells him. 

Except for Tony. Steve’s not entirely sure he could handle losing Tony. 

But strangely enough, he’s okay with that knowledge. 

*

Apparently, Morgan’s independent streak has only grown since she saw Steve last. 

“I’ll take my piggyback ride later,” she says, looking at him over the tops of the sunglasses he’d bought her back in California. 

“Raincheck, noted,” Steve says, pretending to write it down. She just frowns at that, and looks at Tony who is pulling their bags out of the back of a very white, very obnoxious Range Rover that has been commissioned to take them on their road trip. 

“Raincheck means you can cash it in later,” Tony explains, and Steve lets Morgan wiggle out of the hug he’d managed to swindle out of her as a greeting. 

She’s already moved on. 

“I’m going to play,” she tells them, and then she’s going for the door and Steve takes the opportunity to grab Tony’s bag, carefully set it on the driveway, and then reel Tony in until they’re nose-to-nose. 

“Hi,” he gets out, smiling. 

“Hi,” Tony returns, and the ensuing kiss is interrupted all too soon by a couple of very feminine catcalls from the front door. 

“Oh my god,” Bonnie calls out, and they separate. “You’re worse than like, Manny and all of his girlfriends.”

“How many girlfriends does Manny have, exactly?” Tony calls back, and he locks up the car as Steve gathers the bags. 

“Gross,” Beth says, accepting the hug Tony bestows upon her, along with a smacking kiss to the top of her head that she ducks away from while looking secretly pleased with herself. “You guys are like, old. Don’t you have anything better to do than make out where anyone can see you?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be looking,” Tony says, and then Bonnie gets a hug, and Steve really,  _ really _ wants to laugh when she sighs into her own head-kiss. Beth snickers openly and Bonnie glares at her, and Tony heads inside like he’s done nothing at all. 

“You’re mean,” Steve says out of the side of his mouth. 

Tony just looks at him innocently, and then there are a million children clamoring for attention, and Morgan and Serena and Alexa are conspicuously absent. 

“Your daughter is currently spilling nail polish all over the bathroom floor,” Josie informs Tony, who curses loudly and ducks out of a sea of limbs to climb the stairs. 

“What?” Christina asks, her bottom lip wobbling. “Without me?”

Josie shakes her head at Steve, who scoops Christina up to placate her. 

“I almost wish you were taking more of them off my hands,” Denise says before trying to keep Ben and Lance from bothering Tony while he’s in the middle of disciplining. 

“I’m pretty sure the car only fits five,” Steve says. “But I’m willing to swap Tony out for the highest bidder.”

The next few days feel so normal and good that Steve can’t believe it. They pass in a blur of cheeseburgers and piggyback rides and Morgan insisting on bunking with Serena. Tony kisses Steve in the dead of night, both too exhausted and mindful of little ears to bother with much more than that. They fall asleep front to back and wake up the same way, and they get teased mercilessly over it. 

Steve really doesn’t care. 

Tony spends a lot of time talking to Josie, and Steve and Denise leave them to it. They talk at length about money and the legal aspect of everything that goes on in the house, and after Tony wipes the floor with everyone at Monopoly (which Steve sat out, thank you very much), he finds Steve on the back porch. 

“Since when do you smoke?” Tony asks with raised eyebrows, and Steve shrugs around the cigarette. 

“Since I found a pack hidden in the glove compartment,” Steve says, and he doesn’t care if Manny smokes sometimes, but burning through one reminds him of the war in a way that’s not nearly as awful as it used to be. 

He lets Tony take it from him, exhaling like he’s used to it even though Steve knows he isn’t, not anymore. Not since the heart surgery, and the arc reactor before that. 

After a few puffs, Tony hands it back to Steve. The pitter-patter of steady rain around them helps the smell and smoke dissipate, so he follows through with his intent to burn it to the filter as Tony talks. 

“I’m getting the older kids a car to share,” Tony says, and one day in the past Steve would have found that overly indulgent and protested. 

“That’s a good idea,” he says instead, knowing that if Tony is telling him like this, it means Josie and Denise are already on board. 

“Want to come in and play poker?” Tony asks. “We don’t have chips, and Denise won’t let me give them real money to play with, so we’re using Starbursts. Different amounts for the different colors.”

Steve considers the invitation. 

“What kind of poker are we talking? Because I know you can count cards, don’t bother denying it.”

Tony’s mouth opens like he’s thinking about denying it till he’s blue in the face, but he has enough self-respect to turn sheepish. “We can play Texas Hold ‘Em,” he says. “Teach the kids a little strategy.”

Steve’s not too shabby when it comes to strategy. 

“I’m in.”

“Loser has to take first shift driving tomorrow,” Tony suggests, and the tilt of his lips tells Steve that he’s sure he’ll win. 

“Sure,” Steve agrees, and Tony stays with him until he’s stubbed out the cigarette. 

Tony ends up with more Starbursts than anyone else - except for Steve, who just smiles and asks if Tony knows how to work the Keurig in the corner of the kitchen, because he’s going to need it in the morning. 

The horrified expression he gets in return is so worth it. 

*

As punishment for daring to beat him, Tony relegates Steve to the back of the car when they first get on the road. Elliot and Beth argue over who gets to sit in the passenger seat for the entire time that it takes Steve to say his goodbyes, promising that he’ll be back before they know it. When he gets in the car next to a dozing Morgan in her booster seat, Tony is forcing Elliot and Beth to play a game of rock-paper-scissors. 

Beth ends up on Morgan’s other side, sulking. 

Elliot and Tony talk quietly about the summer course and Morgan’s head keeps finding its way to that unnatural angle. Before they’re even an hour out, Steve uses a hand to prop her up just enough that she won’t get a kink in her neck. He catches Tony looking at him in the rearview mirror. 

“You don’t have to do that,” Tony says. “Next time we stop, I can get a sweater or something from the trunk for her to lean on.”

“I don’t mind,” Steve says, and he smiles as Tony’s expression goes as fond as anything. 

“You two are gross,” Beth says, popping her grape-flavored gum as she texts so fast that Steve can barely see her thumbs as they fly across the phone Tony had given her. 

He’d given one to all the older kids, and sometimes Steve wonders if his generosity knows any bounds. 

After their early start, Tony declares the Keurig coffee weaker than circus lemonade - whatever that means, but it makes the twins laugh - and they stop at a gas station for refreshments. Beth takes a sleepy Morgan’s hand to the bathroom and promises not to lose her, and Tony panics at the possibility before Steve bodily drags him to the coffee counter. 

By the time they meet at the register, they’ve got an obscene amount of food. Tony has a coffee as big as a small infant loaded with enough sugar to give him diabetes, a bear claw, beef jerky, and a souvenir cast iron pan that he says is to help Steve develop his culinary talents. Steve rolls his eyes and grabs the biggest water bottle he can find, three bananas, and a bag of warm sugary nuts, a local specialty that he comes very close to regretting as Beth makes several not-so-sly references about his appetite for warm nuts. 

“Do you talk to Denise and Josie like this?” he asks, when threatening to put back her blue raspberry slushie doesn’t get her to stop. 

“No,” Elliot says, adding a chocolate milk and a breakfast sandwich to the pile, along with Morgan’s apple juice, Teddy Grahams, fruit salad, and Sour Patch Kids. “She actually respects them.”

“I respect you guys,” Beth says, snagging her bags of buckeyes and Cool Ranch Doritos as soon as the cashier has scanned them. “I just like seeing the look on your face when I say that kind of stuff.”

Steve stares at her as Tony, completely removed from the situation, continues to discuss the horrific realities of minimum wage with their cashier and slips a wad of hundred dollar bills directly into their hand. 

“Wait,” Steve says, his brain lagging. “What look on my face? What are you talking about?”

Tony just pinches his ass once they’re outside and loading into the car again. 

“You get very flustered,” Tony tells him, forcing Steve to hold his purchases as he helps Morgan get buckled in. “It’s very adorable,”

“Adorable?” Steve asks, looking around for backup, for anyone to defend him. “Really? That’s what we’re going with?”

Beth has successfully strong-armed her way into the front seat, and with Elliot slumping his way into the back, Tony takes his time grinning at Steve and pressing a quick kiss to the corner of his jaw. 

“Very adorable,” he repeats. “And sexy. And hot. Kind of makes me wish we weren’t bogged down with all these kids, so I could get us a place that charges by the hour and see exactly how flustered you can - ”

Beth leans over to lay on the horn, and Tony promptly kicks her out and into the back seat as punishment. 

“You can have the front after we drop Elliot off,” Tony tells her, and Beth scowls until she starts texting again. 

Steve takes the passenger seat and pretends to sleep just to annoy Tony, and they send Josie and Denise pictures of Elliot as they see him off. They all hug and Elliot indulges Morgan, pinky-promising that they’ll see each other again. Beth finally gets to sit up front for more than thirty seconds and Steve drives the rest of the way to Dallas, enduring Morgan’s complaining about not having her favorite music until Tony puts them all out of their misery and hooks his phone up to the car speakers. 

Callie has a row of silver studs running up the edge of her right ear and streaks of golden-pink in her honey-blonde hair, and Beth runs her hands over the strands enviously. They meet at a little dive for a late lunch, and Morgan insists on sitting in Beth’s lap while coloring in several kiddie menus. 

“Don’t get any crayon on the table,” Tony tells her, but she ignores him. 

“I can’t believe it,” Callie says, and Steve had nearly forgotten who Beth got her wild streak from. “Bethie - how’d you manage to wind up with not one, but  _ two _ sugar daddies?”

Steve knows his face goes scarlet, but Tony laughs and high-fives her across the booth. 

“Technically, I’m the only sugar daddy here,” Tony says. “Rogers here is just really good at finding people to mooch off of.”

Steve picks at his wings in faux petulance but lets Tony peck his cheek affectionately, and it’s impossible to hide his smile at knowing that slowly but surely they’re getting more comfortable with what they have together. 

“Be careful,” Beth says, sneaking a bite of Morgan’s calamari, which Tony had warned was a bold choice but she’d insisted on anyway, clearly old enough to have an adventurous palate but not old enough to be wary of dive bar seafood. “Give them any excuse, they’ll start making out like they’re our age, and it’s just gross.”

Callie spares Steve and Tony a glance before she’s grinning at Beth mischievously. “I don’t mind giving them a run for their money if you don’t.”

Beth turns even redder than Steve and buries her face in Morgan’s hair, and Tony cackles obnoxiously while shooting Callie a set of finger guns. 

“And you’re telling me that you didn’t fight harder to keep this one around?” he says, jabbing Steve in the side.

Steve makes sure to possessively loop an arm around Tony’s shoulders, and pretends not to notice when Beth and Callie hold hands under the table. 

They all say goodbye in the parking lot, and Callie promises to be in Houston the next time Tony stops by. Steve wraps Beth in a long hug, and she uncharacteristically stays in his arms without any sign of wanting to let go. 

“I love you,” he tells her. “And if you want to let Callie put streaks in your hair or pierce your ears in weird places, just make sure to send pictures.”

“I think she wants us to get matching belly-button rings,” Beth says, and Steve really hates teenage girls sometimes. 

“Be good,” he says, and she holds on tighter. 

“I will,” she says, and he believes her. “Love you, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t bother hiding the way he sniffles as Tony drives them to a hotel, hands clasped over the center console. 

“It’s okay,” Tony says, jostling their hands. “You’re allowed to miss them, you know.”

“It feels like she’s really my daughter,” Steve says, thinking back to when he’d first met her, all pale hair and snapping gum and loud confidence. 

“She is,” Tony says, like it’s that simple. 

Part of Steve wants to hesitate, to let genetics and biology stop him from thinking of these kids like they’re his. But the truth is that he’s theirs as well, and while Tony helps Morgan in the bath, Steve relaxes on the bed and gets on a video chat with everyone at the house. He then texts Elliot, hoping that he’s settled into the dorm that he’ll call home for the next few weeks, and gets an immediate text back asking him to thank Tony for the spending money he’d left with him. Beth is next, and Tony finds Steve grinning at his phone as they send nonsensical emojis back and forth just for the hell of it. 

“This is why I don’t text,” Tony grumbles. 

“Lucky for you, I’ve got other people to text,” Steve says, and he’s so glad that that’s true. 

He went from feeling like he didn’t need a phone at all, not wanting to contact others or be contacted, to having so many people that he knows would be there for him in an instant. Maybe this is what it’s like to feel settled in the twenty-first century. 

Tony just leans over him, one knee on the bed with his pajamas in his hand as Morgan crawls in between them. 

“Proud of you,” Tony murmurs, pushing Steve’s hair off his forehead to make way for a feather-light kiss. 

“No more kissing!” Morgan groans, throwing her little body about, and Steve just tickles her until she screams uncle while Tony goes to shower. 

Later on, curled up with the two of them, Steve thinks that it couldn’t get any better than this. 

*

Of course, he’s wrong. 

Tony pulls over in Oklahoma because Morgan whines about wanting to ride ponies, and they end up getting friendly with a family of ranchers as only Tony Stark can. Morgan rides a pony and Steve leads her around a pasture until he succumbs to peer pressure and gets on a massive mare, much to Tony’s delight - Tony, who refuses to get close to what he determinedly refers to as “wild stallions who won’t hesitate to kill me if I blink at them wrong.” They have cornbread and chili for dinner and stay in a spare room and Tony fixes one of their trucks and asks Steve if the barn brings back any memories. 

“Clint is going to be so offended that we didn’t stop in,” Steve says, taking a picture of Tony, sweaty and covered in grease as he works beneath the hood. 

“Clint can suck a dick for living in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere.”

“Clint can suck a dick for getting his wife to get us in the same room that night,” Steve says, sending the picture to Rhodes and knowing it will make the rounds from there.

“Oh my God,” Tony says, dropping a wrench with a giant clatter. “Stop. Take off that flannel.”

Steve’s confused but does as asked, leaving him in just a t-shirt. 

“Tell me Morgan’s still helping paint the chicken coop.”

Steve glances around as Tony reaches for their belts, apparently not caring about the grease stains. “I’m not seeing her.”

“Excellent,” Tony says, and then Steve is batting Tony’s hands away because his are cleaner, and they’re somehow fulfilling some twisted decade-old fantasy, and that feels way better than getting on a horse. 

*

They go hiking in Colorado, and cool off in a stream when Morgan gets overheated and starts complaining about her legs hurting. Steve strips his shirt off and makes sure to flex exaggeratedly while Tony vehemently denies any drooling on his end, and then ends up carrying Morgan on his shoulders for the rest of the trail. When she’s not pointing out birds or squirrels or potential patches of poison ivy, she’s tugging on Steve’s ponytail and pretending that his hair works like the reins on a horse. 

There are national monuments in Utah, and they play road games when they’re not slathering Morgan in sunscreen. Steve gets a hat at an outpost and Tony is unusually into it, at least until Morgan steals it and declares it her own. They eat lots of protein bars and after a week on the road, Morgan starts whining for Disneyland, so Tony opens negotiations for a visit during the off-season. 

They visit Portland because why not, and they land dinner reservations at a place with a Michelin star that Tony won’t stop reading Yelp reviews of. The miles catch up to them, though, and the three of them end up collapsed in their hotel room till way past their reservation time and laugh about it over Twinkies and Pringles and reality tv. They get in the next night, because they are who they are, even though Steve hates using their names for any reason, but Tony has no qualms about it. It’s worth it though, the food delicious and the environment veering towards intimate in a way that has Steve longing for Oklahoma, of all places, and as much as he loves Morgan, he kind of wishes she could disappear for half an hour. 

He watches Tony lick his lips and talk animatedly with their waiter, pupils dilated in the low light and hands gesturing wildly. 

Disappear for an hour. Steve definitely wishes Morgan could disappear for an hour, minimum. 

As it is, she behaves perfectly all through dinner and then throws a temper tantrum as soon as they get in the hotel elevator. Tony looks very much over it, and Steve can tell from the way they’re snipping at each other that it isn’t going to end well, so he stops Tony with a firm hand. 

“Let me get her,” he says, praying that he’s not overstepping. “You want to take a walk? Or do you want me to drive her around till she falls asleep?”

“She’s not a baby,” Tony says, but he gets his tablet and heads down to the lobby. Steve gets Morgan ready for bed and takes all her complaints about too-hot water and the wrong shampoo, just rolling with the punches and exercising extreme patience as he helps towel her hair dry. 

“You’re pulling too hard,” she tells him snottily, and he brushes gently before gathering it all into a simple braid and tying it off with the black elastic he’s started keeping on his wrist. 

By the time Tony comes up, Morgan’s fast asleep on Steve’s chest while old episodes of some sitcom play on the tv. 

“How the hell?” Tony wonders quietly, and Steve doesn’t have an answer. He just accepts the way Tony slots their mouths together, slow and deep and the kind of kiss that would normally be full of promise. 

And it is - it’s just a different kind of promise. 

*

Tony has to stop in on some offices in Silicon Valley, and Morgan jumps up and down until Steve agrees to take her to the Golden Gate Bridge. He draws the line at Alcatraz, having too many personal experiences with prisons of sorts, but makes it up to her by stopping into a boutique and letting her pick out sheets of stickers and erasers shaped like fruits and a sparkly pale pink tutu that she insists on wearing immediately. 

Steve asks a very sweet mother of three to take their picture, and Steve is thankful that Morgan has been kept out of the public eye enough that no one looks at them too closely. They eat fish tacos at a wooden picnic bench and look out over the water, and when Morgan abruptly changes the subject, he’s thrown off guard. 

“Do you love my daddy?”

Steve chews thoroughly, and while the answer to the question is simple, he feels like there’s more to it. And there is, because after he answers with a resounding  _ yes _ , Morgan’s got more questions. 

“But how do you love him?” she persists. “Because daddy loved mommy, but they don’t live together anymore. And daddy says he loves me, but he says that it isn’t the same way he loves you. And then I live with mommy and sometimes daddy, but you don’t live with daddy. So if people who love each other don’t have to live together, how do you love my daddy?”

“You know where I live,” Steve says, and he wishes he could put off the conversation until he talks to Tony because the last thing he wants to do is confuse Morgan. As it is, he considers his words while she looks at him expectantly. “I live with Denise and Serena and everyone, and I love all of them. But sometimes, we love so many people, and we can’t all live in the same place.”

“Why not?” Her eyes go wide with an idea. “What if we all did? Daddy has the big house with Uncle Rhodey and Mister Bucky and Miss Wanda.”

Steve smothers a laugh at Morgan referring to the compound as a house, and makes a note to ask Bucky if he knows that Morgan calls him Mister. 

“Because all the other kids go to school near their own house, the way you do,” he says. “And they have friends like you do. But you can still see them, even if you don’t live with them.”

Morgan crosses her tiny arms across her front, like she’s thinking about it. 

It’s horribly intimidating, and Steve just about squirms under the pressure. 

“So we can love people without living with them,” is the conclusion she comes to. “Even though I love Uncle Rhodey and sometimes live with him.”

“Yes,” Steve says, hoping that that’s that. And it seems to be, as Morgan uses both hands to maneuver the glass bottle of orange soda they’ve been sharing, but then she looks at him with her most serious stare yet. 

“So why do you want to live with Miss Denise and Miss Josie instead of daddy?”

Steve really wishes he could talk to Tony. 

*

Tony laughs when Steve relays the conversation to him as they head down the coast the next day after an early lunch of pizza, oysters, and excellent wine. Steve frowns as he glances in the rearview mirror to make sure Morgan is still asleep, since Tony doesn’t seem to be too concerned with potentially waking her up. 

“So what did you tell her?” Tony asks, his grin so wide it splits his face open, and Steve both loves it and resents it right now. 

“That she needed to ask you,” Steve says, shifting out from behind a particularly minivan. “I’m surprised she hasn’t already, honestly.”

When he finally stops laughing, it’s to brush absentminded kisses over Steve’s knuckles. 

“ _ Do  _ you want to keep living with everyone?”

“I’m not leaving them,” Steve says, resolute. “That's what I told Denise and Josie. I still want to be the one dropping them off at school and helping them with math homework.”

“I’d say that I should be the one helping with math homework, but sometimes you surprise me and show me you’re more than just a pretty face,” Tony muses. 

“Full of surprises,” Steve says dryly. “After all this time.”

“Imagine that,” Tony says, and Steve loves the crinkles by his eyes. 

He takes his eyes off the road for just a second to kiss them tenderly. Tony goes soft, and he clears his throat before speaking. 

“I hope you’re not letting my daughter dictate our future for us.”

“I don’t know how we’re going to do this,” Steve admits, which is kind of scary. “I love you both, and love being with you, but I can’t leave the kids. I just can’t. I don’t want to.”

Tony just hums in acknowledgment, studying the way their fingers fit together. 

Steve thinks that maybe he needs to give a little more here.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, shaking their joined hands in what he hopes is a reassuring manner. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Tony says. “And so does Morgan.”

“And I love her, so much,” Steve says, because he’ll put up with a million of Morgan’s tantrums if it means earning the privilege of a place in her life. “I almost wish I could be in more than one place at a time.”

It feels impossible for a second: the tantalizing concept of training up future Avengers with Tony at his side, beach days with Morgan in Malibu, and late night bonfires with those fourteen kids that restarted his dormant, hibernating heart. 

For a second he panics, thinking that he’s lost the thread of it all. 

He thinks that he’s right back where he started, with no idea of where he belongs or what he should do. 

But then Tony is talking, and it brings him back to where he is. 

He’s driving down the Pacific coast with people he’d give the world for. 

Steve might be grieving still, uncertain at times and missing Natasha so much that he knows eventually he’ll have to deal with the tidal threat lurking around the edges of his existence. Before it probably would have broken him, left him irreparable, but he listens to Tony talk and knows that when that day comes he won’t be alone. 

Maybe he never had to be alone. 

He doesn’t have to do any of this alone. Not anymore. 

“We’ll figure it out at whatever pace you need,” Tony is saying when Steve manages to return from autopilot. “I’ve been thinking about getting a condo in Houston, that way I can stay a little longer when I visit. And we don’t have to worry about spying eyes every time I want to get your shirt off.”

“Tony,” Steve says, smiling despite himself because the man beside him makes him so happy that most days it’s still got that tentative sheen of surreal newness to it. He kind of hopes that never goes away. “Are you hinting that you like me with less clothing?”

“Actually,” Tony says, pulling his hand away but letting Steve recapture it immediately. “I’m thinking of reporting you for indecent exposure. You wanna talk about crimes against humanity?”

Steve’s throat feels thick with love, looking over to watch Tony, still handsome as he pulls a disgusted face. 

Of all the places he could have gone, he thinks he ended up exactly where he needed to be. 

And then Steve catches the relief etched into the lines of Tony’s face as they joke about it, as Steve asks Tony if he plans on reporting him to anyone, because if so, he’d like to be a little more prepared this time. 

“You’ve already got the beard for it - I’d say you’re plenty prepared,” Tony says, accompanying the quip with a soft caress to Steve’s jaw. 

He thinks, the realization slamming into him, that maybe Tony ended up exactly where he needed to be, too. 

And that might be worth everything they’ve gone through - not just separately, but most importantly,  _ together _ . 

*

They make one last stop before they go home. 

Morgan dances along the shore of the beach that Steve is coming to think of as theirs, and Tony props up on his elbows on a woven blanket they’d picked up somewhere in Idaho. Steve’s lost his shirt, winking at Tony in the process, and rests his head in Tony’s lap. 

“At least let me get you to my guy for a trim,” Tony begs. “You’re getting split ends.”

Steve keeps his eyes closed, enjoying the way Tony’s combing his fingers through his hair. 

“You’ll end up slipping him the title for a Ferrari in exchange for scalping me against my wishes.”

Tony makes an indignant noise. “I would do no such thing!”

“Maybe I’ll let Morgan do it,” Steve says, listening to the roar of the waves and Morgan’s off-pitch singing. “She loves a good makeover.”

“Yeah, because that will turn out well for the rest of us,” Tony snorts. “She’ll be trying to give everyone else haircuts.”

“Do you not like the hair?” Steve inquires, finally. 

“I like the man with the hair,” Tony says, and Steve just adjusts himself further into Tony’s midsection. “Isn’t that enough?”

“More than,” Steve tells him, meaning it. 

Then there’s a tiny pinch that barely registers, but enough to make Steve open his eyes. 

“What are you - ”

“Gray hair,” Tony says triumphantly, and then he’s holding something in front of Steve’s face, and it takes a second to focus and see what Tony’s seeing. “Look whose age is finally catching up to him!”

Steve rolls his eyes, but takes the single strand of hair between his fingers and examines it. 

“You know what this means,” he says, joy slowly coursing through his body. 

“That I get to double up on the old man jokes?”

“That I get to grow old with you.”

Steve nearly second guesses it as he twists his neck to see Tony’s expression. His heart pounds nervously while Tony freezes, but then he’s looking stupidly adoring and Steve prays he’s a mirror of that. 

“Yeah?” Tony asks, hands cradling Steve’s head, thumbs tapping against his temples. “You want that?”

Steve sits up swiftly, pulling Tony in till their foreheads press close and they’re both breathing hard, exhales mingling together until Steve swears they’re just breathing each other in. 

“Yeah,” Steve says, and he’s a little cross-eyed but refuses to look away from Tony’s eyes, big and brown and loving. “I do.”

He means to kiss him. He really does. But then Morgan is flying towards them in a flurry of sandy limbs and salt-streaked hair, and she’s shrieking something about no more kissing and Steve knows she’s learned too much from Bonnie and Beth, the same way he has. 

Steve will get to kiss him later. 

Steve isn’t going anywhere. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this little fic was so much fun, and to know that other people could get some enjoyment from it really means a lot to me. I just want to thank everyone who was kind enough to take the time to read this through and leave kudos/comments - writers always appreciate any kind of feedback.


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